crystallographic

adjective

crys·​tal·​lo·​graph·​ic ˌkri-stə-lə-ˈgra-fik How to pronounce crystallographic (audio)
: of or relating to crystals or crystallography
crystallographically adverb

Examples of crystallographic in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Considered for a long time impossible by classic crystallographic rules, quasicrystals, first discovered in the 1980s, have a distinct chemical formula like other minerals, but the atomic pattern is not periodic. David Bressan, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024 The Dark Lady of DNA, which probably did more than anything to bring recognition to Franklin -- both for the important role her x-ray crystallographic work played in the discovery of the double helix and for the condescending way she was treated by Watson and other colleagues. George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 19 Apr. 2013 The upstart British team had a hidden advantage: crystallographic X-rays of DNA taken by colleague Rosalind Franklin. Linda Marsa, Discover Magazine, 29 July 2014 There are six crystallographic polymorphs of cocoa butter molecules, that is, there are six ways the molecules can organize themselves. Elsbeth Sites, Discover Magazine, 6 Oct. 2015 But James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 discovery (using crystallographic evidence from Rosalind Franklin) of the double-helix structure of DNA, so elegantly suited for replication, changed the consensus. Quanta Magazine, 27 Mar. 2020 Figure 4, for example, looks at first like a counterexample to the crystallographic restriction, with five-fold rotational symmetry around point A, and wallpaper pattern shifts in the directions of AB and AC. Quanta Magazine, 5 Mar. 2013 The image, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was made from hundreds of crystallographic x-rays, each providing a multi-layered picture of the capsid’s structure. Brandon Keim, WIRED, 17 Feb. 2009

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'crystallographic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1804, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of crystallographic was in 1804

Dictionary Entries Near crystallographic

Cite this Entry

“Crystallographic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crystallographic. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!