AZURITE

azurite, or chessylite, a mineral which is a basic copper carbonate, 2cuco_3.cu(oh)_2. in its vivid blue colour it contrasts strikingly with the emerald-green malachite, also a basic copper carbonate, but containing rather more water and less carbon dioxide. it was known to pliny under the name _caeruleum_, and the modern name azurite (given by f. s. beudant in 1824) also has reference to the azure-blue colour; the name chessylite, also in common use, is of later date (1852), and is from the locality, chessy near lyons, which has supplied the best crystallized specimens of the mineral. crystals of azurite belong to the monoclinic system; they have a vitreous lustre and are translucent. the streak is blue, but lighter than the colour of the mineral in mass. hardness 3-1/2--4; sp. gr. 3.8. azurite occurs with malachite in the upper portions of deposits of copper ore, and owes its origin to the alteration of the sulphide or of native copper by water containing carbon dioxide and oxygen. it is thus a common mineral in all copper mines, and sometimes occurs in large masses, as in arizona and in south australia, where it has been worked as an ore of copper, of which element it contains 55%. being less hydrated than malachite it is itself liable to alteration into this mineral, and pseudomorphs of malachite after azurite are not uncommon. occasionally the massive material is cut and polished for decorative purposes, though the application in this direction is far less extensive than that of malachite. (l. j. s.) azymites (gr. [greek: a-], without; [greek: zume], leaven), a name given by the orthodox eastern to the western or latin church, because of the latter's use of unleavened bread in the eucharist, a practice which arose in the 9th century and is also observed by armenians and maronites following the jewish passover custom. the orthodox church strenuously maintains its point, arguing that the very name bread, the holiness of the mystery, and the example of jesus and the early church alike, testify against the use of unleavened bread in this connexion. [v.03 p.0087] b this letter corresponds to the second symbol in the phoenician alphabet, and appears in the same position in all the european alphabets, except those derived, like the russian, from medieval greek, in which the pronunciation of this symbol had changed from _b_ to _v_. a new form had therefore to be invented for the genuine _b_ in slavonic, to which there was, at the period when the alphabet was adopted, no corresponding sound in greek. the new symbol, which occupies the second position, was made by removing the upper loop of b, thus producing a symbol somewhat resembling an ordinary lowercase b. the old b retained the numerical value of the greek [beta] as 2, and no numerical value was given to the new symbol. in the phoenician alphabet the earliest forms are [two bs] or more rounded [1]. the rounded form appears also in the earliest aramaic (see alphabet). like some other alphabetic symbols it was not borrowed by greek in its original form. in the very early rock inscriptions of thera (700-600 b.c.), written from right to left; it appears in a form resembling the ordinary greek [lambda]; this form apparently arose from writing the semitic symbol upside down. its form in inscriptions of melos, selinus, syracuse and elsewhere in the 6th and 5th centuries suggests the influence of aramaic forms in which the head of the letter is opened, [2]. the corinthian [3], [4] and [5] (also at corcyra) and the [two bs] of byzantine coins are other adaptations of the same symbol. the form [6] which it takes in the alphabets of naxos, delos and other ionic islands at the same period is difficult to explain. otherwise its only variation is between pointed and rounded loops ([7] and [8]). the sound which the symbol represents is the voiced stop made by closing the lips and vibrating the vocal chords (see phonetics). it differs from _p_ by the presence of vibration of the vocal chords and from _m_ because the nasal passage as well as the lips is closed. when an audible emission of breath attends its production the aspirate _bh_ is formed. this sound was frequent in the pro-ethnic period of the indo-european languages and survived into the indo-aryan languages. according to the system of phonetic changes generally known as "grimm's law," an original _b_ appears in english as _p_, an original _bh_ as b. an original medial _p_ preceding the chief accent of the word also appears as _b_ in english and the other members of the same group. it is not certain that any english word is descended from an original word beginning with _b_, though it has been suggested that _peg_ is of the same origin as the latin _baculum_ and the greek [greek: baktron]. when the lips are not tightly closed the sound produced is not a stop, but a spirant like the english _w_. in late latin there was a tendency to this spirant pronunciation which appears as early as the beginning of the 2nd century a.d.; by the 3rd century _b_ and consonantal _u_ are inextricably confused. when this consonantal _u_ (english _w_ as seen in words borrowed very early from latin like _wall_ and _wine_) passed into the sound of english _v_ (labio-dental) is not certain, but germanic words borrowed into latin in the 5th century a.d. have in their latin representation _gu_- for germanic _w_-, _guisa_ corresponding to english _wise_ and reborrowed indirectly as _guise_. the earliest form of the name of the symbol which we can reach is the hebrew _beth_, to which the phoenician must have been closely akin, as is shown by the greek [greek: beta], which is borrowed from it with a vowel affixed. (p. gi.)