smectite
noun
smectite is a noun meaning “Any of many clay phyllosilicate minerals that have a relatively open structure” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-M-E-C-T-I-T-E, and it appears about once in every 27 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of smectite is smectites.
What does smectite mean?
noun
- 1
Any of many clay phyllosilicate minerals that have a relatively open structure.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of smectite
- smectites plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is smectite?
Smectite appears about once in every 27 million words in written English, the 157,761st 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).
Smectite in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense clay mineral:
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 smectite come from?
From Ancient Greek σμήχω (smḗkhō, “to rub off”) + -ite.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).