Affixes

This ending appears in a number of mineral names as an alternative to ‑ite¹ when following a vowel. A few examples are: cryolite (Greek kruos, frost; the main deposits are found in Greenland), a mineral added to bauxite as a flux in aluminium smelting; oolite (Greek ōion, egg), limestone consisting of a mass of rounded grains made up of concentric layers; rhyolite (Greek rhuax, lava stream), a general name for fine-grained volcanic rocks typically occurring in lava flows; zeolite (Greek zein, to boil, because examples swell when heated), any of a large group of minerals consisting of hydrated aluminosilicates.

The ending is less commonly used to create the names of fossils: coprolite (Greek kopros, dung), fossilized dung; stromatolite (modern Latin stroma, stromat‑, layer, covering), a calcareous mound built up of layers of lime-secreting cyanobacteria and trapped sediment; graptolite (Greek graptos, marked with letters, because impressions resemble markings with a slate pencil), a fossil marine invertebrate animal of the Palaeozoic era.