Dictionary

Darwinite en · NOUN

Etymology

From Darwin + -ite.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Synonym of Darwinian. ▸ One who believes in Darwinian evolution.
   • Oh, but, guesses our ingenious Darwinite, in this breed the male birds courted the bright-coloured ones and neglected the others, and thus a bright-coloured race has survived by natural selection. 1879, Henry Strickland Constable, Fashions of the Day in Medicine and Science: A Few More Hints:
   • In fact, as was already being demonstrated by German anatomist Carl Vogt, a polygenist and Darwinite, the theory of natural selection could easily be used within a strictly polygenist framework by arguing that the different races had evolved separately from different species of anthropoid apes (Hunt 1866: 339). 2004, Cressida Fforde, Collecting the Dead: Archaeology and the Reburial Issue, page 28:
   • The appeal to the unknown and the imaginary is the modus operandi of the modern Darwinite. 1890 September 15, C. Carter Blake, “Our Fallen Brethren”, in Lucifer, volume 7, number 37, page 54:
2. (countable, uncountable) Synonym of Darwinian. ▸ Someone from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
   • Our introduction to the amazing wildfowl in the north was at the end of a forty-mile run, due east of Darwin near the Adelaide River, with Jim Ward, a Darwinite, at the wheel of a highpowered car. 1933, Charles Henry Holmes, We Find Australia, page 68:
   • Life wasn't easy for the Chinese, even if they knew how to be self-sufficient, fourth-generation Darwinite Laurence Ah Toy reminds me. 2014, Tess Lea, Darwin:
   • Australia's north pole has a magnetic charm, and like many others, you could become a permanent statistic — something the locals are proud to call a Darwinite. 1987, Geoffrey Atkinson, Philip Quirk, The Australian adventure:
3. (countable, uncountable) A silver-grey arsenide of copper (Cu₁₈As).
   • Darwinite is a stone of loving relationship. 2015, Robert Simmons, Naisha Ahsian, The Book of Stones:
   • The name Darwinite has been adopted in honour of Darwin, whose admirable geological examination of this part of South America is so well known as to require no comment. 1860, D. Forbes, “On Darwinite, a new Mineral Species from Chile”, in Philosophical Magazine, page 423:
   • The mineral Darwinite was proved identical with a mineral which had been about same time found at Lake Superior, and which had been called Whitneyite. 1866, Report of the Thirty-Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science - Volume 35, page 29:
   • Algodonite (Whitneyite, Darwinite). 2008, Bernhard Pracejus, The Ore Minerals Under the Microscope: An Optical Guide, page 92:

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