Silex is any of various forms of ground stone. In modern contexts the word refers to a finely ground, nearly pure form of
silica
Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is ...
or silicate.
In the late 16th century, it meant powdered or ground up "
flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...
s" (i.e. stones, generally meaning the class of "hard rocks")
It was later used in 1787 when describing experiments in a published paper by
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...
. ''Silex'' is now most commonly used to describe finely ground silicates used as pigments in paint.
Archaic and foreign uses
* The word "silex" was previously used to refer to
flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...
and
chert
Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...
and sometimes other hard rocks.
* In Latin "silex" originally referred to any hard rock, although now it often refers specifically to flint.
Vitruvius
Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled '' De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attribut ...
''De Arch'' 1.5.8.5 http://latin.packhum.org/loc/1056/1/9/4230-4235
* In many
Latin languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
, "silex" or a similar word is used to refer to flint. Although the modern English word "silex" has the same etymology, its current meaning has changed. These are
false friends
In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
.
* FK Sileks are a North Macedonian football team based in Kratovo whose name literally means "flint."