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Onyx vs Alabaster - What's the difference?

onyx | alabaster |

As nouns the difference between onyx and alabaster

is that onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony, a cryptocrystalline form of quartz while alabaster is a fine-grained white or lightly-tinted variety of gypsum, used ornamentally.

As adjectives the difference between onyx and alabaster

is that onyx is jet-black while alabaster is made of alabaster.

onyx

English

(wikipedia onyx)

Noun

  • (mineralogy) A banded variety of chalcedony, a cryptocrystalline form of quartz.
  • A jet-black color, named after the gemstone.

    • Adjective

    (-)
  • jet-black
  • * , Genesis, 2:12
    • And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1922, author=, title=“Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=3/7/2 citation
    • , passage=There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of the sky?: a black night and very silent on Cimiez?; and a black and silent prospect from the verandah

    See also

    * sardonyx

    References

    ----

    alabaster

    English

    (wikipedia alabaster)

    Alternative forms

    * alabastre (obsolete) * alablaster (obsolete)

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A fine-grained white or lightly-tinted variety of gypsum, used ornamentally.
  • * c. 1596 , , The Merchant of Venice , Act I, Scene I, lines 89-90
    • Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
    Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ?
  • * 1867 '', ''Paradiso , Canto XV, lines 22-23] (translated by [[w:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow])
    • Nor was the flame dissevered from its ribbon
  • *:: But like a radiant fillet ran along
  • *:: So that fire seemed it behind alabaster .
  • * 1915 , The New York Times , " Egyptian Antiquities for Metropolitan" (pdf), 15 May
    • One of the striking relics found at the tomb, was a Canopic portrait head of Queen Tii, made entirely of alabaster except the eyes and eyebrows, which were inlaid lapis lazuli and osidian.
  • (historical) A variety of calcite, translucent and sometimes banded.

    • Adjective

    (-)
  • Made of alabaster
    • The crown is stored in an alabaster box with an onyx handle and a gold lock.
  • Resembling alabaster: white, pale, translucent.
    • An ominous alabaster fog settled in the valley.

    Quotations

    * 1594 , William Shakespeare, " The Rape of Lucrece", lines 418-420 *: With more than admiration he admir’d *:: Her azure veins, her alabaster skin, *:: Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin. * 1611 , King James Version of the Bible, Mark 14:3 *: And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. * before 1887 , Emily Dickinson, " Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers" *: Safe in their alabaster chambers *: Untouched by morning, untouched by noon *: Sleep the meek members of the resurrection, *: Rafters of satin, and roof of stone. * 1895 , Katherine Lee Bates, "" *: Thy alabaster cities gleam *: Undimmed by human tears! *