Definition of "diorite" [di•o•rite]

• Any of various dark, granite-textured, crystalline rocks rich in plagioclase and having little quartz. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Besides stuffs and mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds, stools, an enormous number of vases, some in coarse pottery for common use, others in choice stone such as diorite, granite, or rock crystal very finely worked, on the fragments of all of which may be read cut in outline the names and preamble of the Pharaoh to whom the object belonged."
• "Intrusive igneous rocks such as diorite, gabbro and granite solidify below the Earth's surface while extrusive igneous rocks such as basalt, obsidian and pumice solidify on or above the surface."
• "Laws regulating financial interactions survive from as early as the eighteenth century BC, when King Hammurabi of Babylon had a number of them written in Mesopotamian stone, or rather rock, namely superhard diorite."