The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dolerite \Dol"er*ite\, n. [Gr. dolero`s deceptive, because it was easily confounded with diorite.] (Petrography)
A dark, crystalline, igneous rock, chiefly pyroxene with labradorite.
Coarse-grained basalt.
Diabase.
Any dark, igneous rock composed chiefly of silicates of iron and magnesium with some feldspar. -- Dol`er*it"ic, a.
Wiktionary
n. (context geology English) A fine-grained basaltic rock
Usage examples of "dolerite".
The shelve of the beach saved the cave from being flooded and the beetling of the cliff kept it dry and within a couple of feet of the entrance but it could not keep out the rain smell, the raw smell of Kerguelen carried from inland, the smell of bog patches and new washed dolerite and bitter vegetation, keen, like the smell of the Stone Age.
The young men were also carrying, in slings of papyrus and cord, their heavy dolerite hammers, egg-shaped rocks bigger than fists but smaller than human heads, and harder even than granite.
As we sat on this fiery mount, surrounded by a circular rampart of rocks, and looked up at the immense towers of dark dolerite which ran up almost vertically to the height of twenty-five hundred feet above us, musing over the tremendous force which fashioned this awful amphitheatre--spacious enough for all the gods of Tartarus to hold high carnival--the clouds which hung in the thin air around the crest of the crater pealed forth thunder after thunder, which, reverberating from precipice to precipice, were answered by the crash of rocks let loose by the storm, till the whole mountain seemed to tremble like a leaf.
They had pulled carts filled with dolerite hammers, and bronze tools, and wooden wedges.
With only their dolerite balls and hammers, they began to build a sliding door of granite.
The shelve of the beach saved the cave from being flooded and the beetling of the cliff kept it dry and within a couple of feet of the entrance but it could not keep out the rain smell, the raw smell of Kerguelen carried from inland, the smell of bog patches and new washed dolerite and bitter vegetation, keen, like the smell of the Stone Age.