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hornblende

horn·blende/ˈhɔɹnˌblɛnd/noun

hornblende is a noun meaning “A green to black amphibole mineral, of complex structure, formed in the late stages of cooling in igneous rock” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-R-N-B-L-E-N-D-E and has 2 syllables (horn·blende), and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of hornblende is hornblendes.

What does hornblende mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A green to black amphibole mineral, of complex structure, formed in the late stages of cooling in igneous rock.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce hornblende?

  • UK /ˈhɔːnˌblɛnd/
  • US /ˈhɔɹnˌblɛnd/

Hornblende has 2 syllables, split horn·blende in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Pvanp7-hornblende.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of hornblende

  • hornblendes plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is hornblende?

Hornblende appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 125,655th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Hornblende in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense a green to black amphibole mineral:

LanguageWords
Frenchhornblende
GermanHornblende
Portuguesehorneblenda
Spanishhornablenda, hornblenda

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does hornblende come from?

From German Hornblende, from Horn (“horn”) + Blende (see blende).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).