lava

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Related to lava: Lava lamp

la·va

(lä′və, lăv′ə)

1. Molten rock that reaches the earth's surface through a volcano or fissure.

2. The rock formed by the cooling and solidifying of molten rock.

[Italian, perhaps from Latin lābēs, fall, from Latin lābī, to fall.]

Word History: Appropriately, lava was named by people living near Mount Vesuvius. The only active volcano on the European mainland, Vesuvius has erupted frequently since Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by it in ad 79. The Neapolitans who lived in the vicinity took the Italian word lava, meaning "a stream caused suddenly by rain," and applied it to the streams of molten rock coming down the sides of Vesuvius. The term was then taken into Standard Italian, where it came to mean the rock in both its molten and its solidified states. The Italian word was borrowed into English around the middle of the 18th century.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

lava

(ˈlɑːvə)

1. (Geological Science) magma emanating from volcanoes and other vents

2. (Geological Science) any extrusive igneous rock formed by the cooling and solidification of molten lava

[C18: from Italian (Neapolitan dialect), from Latin lavāre to wash]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

la•va

(ˈlɑ və, ˈlæv ə)

n.

1. the molten, fluid rock that issues from a volcano or volcanic vent.

2. the rock formed when this solidifies, occurring in many structurally different varieties.

[1740–50; < Italian, orig. Neapolitan dial.: avalanche « Latin lābēs a sliding down, falling]

la·va

(lä′və)

1. Molten rock that flows from a volcano or from a crack in the Earth. See more at magma.

2. The igneous rock formed when this substance cools and hardens.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

lava

Molten rock when it appears at the Earth’s surface.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun

lava - rock that in its molten form (as magma) issues from volcanos; lava is what magma is called when it reaches the surface

aa - a dry form of lava resembling clinkers

pahoehoe - freely flowing lava

pillow lava - lava that hardened in rounded shapes suggestive of pillows; believed to result from underwater eruptions

volcanic rock - extrusive igneous rock solidified near or on the surface of the Earth

Translations

magma

حِمَمٌ بُرْكَانِيَّةٌحُمَم بُرْكانيَّه

лава

lavamagma

lávamagma

lavamagma

Lava Magma

λάβα μάγμα

lafo

lava magma

laavamagma

گدازه

laava

lave magma

lava

lávamagma

lavamagma

hraunbergkvika

lava magma

溶岩

용암

lava

lavamagma

lavamagma

lawamagma

lava magma

лава магма

lávamagma

lavamagma

лава

lavamagma

หินลาวา

lav magma

лава

nham thạch

熔岩

lava

[ˈlɑːvə]

A. N → lava f

B. CPD lava flow N → torrente m or río m de lava

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

lava

[ˈlɑːvə] n → lave f lava flowlava flow n → coulée f de lavelava lamp n → lampe f à lave

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

lava

n → Lava f; lava bed → Lavadecke f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

lava

[ˈlɑːvə] n → lava

lava

(ˈlaːvə) noun

liquid, melted rock etc thrown out from a volcano and becoming solid as it cools.

lava

→ حِمَمٌ بُرْكَانِيَّةٌ láva lava Lava λάβα lava laava lave lava lava 溶岩 용암 lava lava lawa lava лава lava หินลาวา lav nham thạch 熔岩

References in classic literature ?

After resting an hour or two, driven to it by our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in some far past age.

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This is a stream which rises among the great bed of mountains north of the Lava Plain, and after a winding course falls into Snake River.

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Everywhere you go, in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like Broadway.

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At fifty feet above the peak, in the midst of a rain of stones and scoriae, a large crater was vomiting forth torrents of lava which fell in a cascade of fire into the bosom of the liquid mass.

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(And so well did we, that for the rest of the cruise we were known as the "Three Sports.") Victor pointed out a pathway that disappeared up a wild canyon, emerged on a steep bare lava slope, and thereafter appeared and disappeared, ever climbing, among the palms and flowers.

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It is supposed that these vast plains are strewn with blocks of lava from the neighboring volcanoes on its right, Ptolemy, Purbach, Arzachel.

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In front of her a volcanic crater was pouring forth torrents of melted lava, and hurling masses of rock to an enormous height.

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This gully was about a third of the way up the mountain, and it was filled to the brim with red-hot molten lava in which swam fire-serpents and poisonous salamanders.

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Blackened rocks and mounds of lava I had already seen everywhere peeping out from amid the luxuriant vegetation which draped them, but this asphalt pool in the jungle was the first sign that we had of actual existing activity on the slopes of the ancient crater.

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A single green leaf can scarcely be discovered over wide tracts of the lava plains; yet flocks of goats, together with a few cows, contrive to exist.

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The place was a narrow passage between high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds leaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens.

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There were days when my heart was volcanic As the scoriac rivers that roll -- As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek, In the ultimate climes of the Pole -- That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the Boreal Pole.

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