/ English Dictionary |
LAVA
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Rock that in its molten form (as magma) issues from volcanos; lava is what magma is called when it reaches the surface
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("lava" is a kind of...):
volcanic rock (extrusive igneous rock solidified near or on the surface of the Earth)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lava"):
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)
Context examples:
Once lava emerged, it flowed along a newly formed crack inside the volcano's two-mile-wide by five-mile-long opening, or caldera.
(Underwater volcano's fiery eruption captured in detail by seafloor observatory, NSF)
Then Villarrica went back to sleep, its crater filled with a pool of slowly cooling lava.
(Listen to the pulse of an erupting volcano, NSF)
An internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time.
(Pluto’s Big Moon Charon Reveals a Colorful and Violent History, NASA)
The eruption of the Eldgjá in the tenth century is known as a lava flood: a rare type of prolonged volcanic eruption in which huge flows of lava engulf the landscape, accompanied by a haze of sulphurous gases.
(Volcanic eruption influenced Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, University of Cambridge)
Let those talk of the phlegm of our countrymen who have never seen them when the lava crust of restraint is broken, and when for an instant the strong, enduring fires of the North glow upon the surface.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Nearly two miles deep in the Pacific Ocean and 100 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, scientists on two oceanographic cruises used subsea vehicles to explore the Dorado Outcrop, a rocky patch of seafloor formed of cooled and hardened lava from an underwater volcano.
(Giant group of octopus moms discovered in the deep sea, National Science Foundation)
“At first, we couldn’t understand how the gases could emerge much colder than the molten lava sloshing in the lake.”
(Size matters: if you are a bubble of volcanic gas, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
The lava on the dayside would reflect radiation from the star, contributing to the overall observed temperature of the planet.
(Lava or Not, Exoplanet 55 Cancri e Likely to have Atmosphere, NASA)
The authors had initially hypothesized the lava itself would cause an increase in microbes that rely on iron and phosphates by directly supplying them with those nutrients.
(Scientists report skyrocketing phyotplankton population in aftermath of Kīlauea eruption, Wikinews)
Io is the closest thing we have to hell in our Solar System, a Jovian moon that features hundreds of active volcanoes and expansive lakes filled with lava.
(Massive Lava Waves Detected on Solar System’s Most Volcanically Active Object, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)