Dictionary:
meer·schaum (mîr'shəm, -shôm') 
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[German : Meer, sea (from Middle High German mer , from Old High German mari) + Schaum, foam (from Middle High German schūm , from Old High German scūm).]
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: meerschaum |
For more information on meerschaum, visit Britannica.com.
| Devil's Dictionary: meerschaum |
n.
(Literally, seafoam, and by many erroneously supposed to be made of it.) A fine white clay, which for convenience in coloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmen engaged in that industry. The purpose of coloring it has not been disclosed by the manufacturers.
There was a youth (you've heard before,
This woeful tale, may be),
Who bought a meerschaum pipe and swore
That color it would he!
He shut himself from the world away,
Nor any soul he saw.
He smoke by night, he smoked by day,
As hard as he could draw.
His dog died moaning in the wrath
Of winds that blew aloof;
The weeds were in the gravel path,
The owl was on the roof.
"He's gone afar, he'll come no more,"
The neighbors sadly say.
And so they batter in the door
To take his goods away.
Dead, pipe in mouth, the youngster lay,
Nut-brown in face and limb.
"That pipe's a lovely white," they say,
"But it has colored him!"
The moral there's small need to sing --
'Tis plain as day to you:
Don't play your game on any thing
That is a gamester too.
Martin Bulstrode
| WordNet: meerschaum |
The noun has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1:
a white clayey mineral
Synonym: sepiolite
Meaning #2:
a pipe having a bowl made of meerschaum
| Wikipedia: Meerschaum |
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007) |
Meerschaum (help·info) is a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rather suggestive of sea-foam (German: Meerschaum), whence also the French name for the same substance, écume de mer.
Meerschaum is opaque and of white, grey or cream color, breaking with a conchoidal or fine earthy fracture, and occasionally fibrous in texture. Because it can be readily scratched with the nail, its hardness is placed at about 2. The specific gravity varies from 0.988 to 1.279, but the porosity of the mineral may lead to error. Meerschaum is a hydrous magnesium silicate with the formula H4Mg2Si3O10.
Most of the meerschaum of commerce is obtained from Asia Minor, chiefly from the plain of Eskişehir in Turkey, between Istanbul and Ankara. It occurs there in irregular nodular masses, in alluvial deposits, which are extensively worked for its extraction. It is said that in this district there are 4000 shafts leading to horizontal galleries for extraction of the meerschaum. The principal workings are at Sepetçi Ocağı and Kemikçi Ocağı, about 20 miles southeast of Eskişehir. The mineral is associated with magnesite (magnesium carbonate), the primitive source of both minerals being a serpentine.
When first extracted meerschaum is soft, but it hardens on exposure to solar heat or when dried in a warm room. Meerschaum is found also, though less abundantly, in Greece, as at Thebes, and in the islands of Euboea and Samos; it occurs also in serpentine at Hrubschitz near Kromau in Moravia. It is found to a limited extent at certain localities in France and Spain, and is known in Morocco. In the United States it occurs in serpentine in Pennsylvania (as at Nottingham, Chester County) and in South Carolina and Utah.
Meerschaum has occasionally been used as a substitute for soapstone, fuller's earth, and as a building material; but its chief use is for smoking pipes and cigarette holders. When smoked, Meerschaum pipes gradually change color, and old Meerschaums will turn incremental shades of yellow, orange, and red from the base on up. When prepared for use as a pipe, the natural nodules are first scraped to remove the red earthy matrix, then dried, again scraped and polished with wax. The crudely shaped masses thus prepared are turned and carved, smoothed with glass-paper and Dutch rushes, heated in wax or stearine, and finally polished with bone-ash, etc.
Meerschaum products traditionally were made in manufacturing centres such as Vienna. Since the 1970s, though, Turkey has banned the exportation of meerschaum nodules, trying to set up a local meerschaum industry. The once famous manufacturers have therefore disappeared. Nowadays, meerschaum pipes not obtained from Turkish producers are usually made of pressed meerschaum or African meerschaum, which are inferior in quality.
Imitations are made in plaster of Paris and other preparations.
The soft, white, earthy mineral from Långbanshyttan, in Värmland, Sweden, known as aphrodite (Greek: sea foam), is closely related to meerschaum.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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Copyrights:
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Devil's Dictionary. Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, 1911 Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Meerschaum". Read more |
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