The Greeks thought rock crystal was water frozen forever — 'krystallos' meant 'ice.'
A solid material whose atoms are arranged in a highly ordered, repeating pattern; also, clear, transparent quartz or high-quality glass.
From Old English 'cristalla' and reinforced by Old French 'cristal,' both from Latin 'crystallum,' from Greek 'krýstallos' (κρύσταλλος, ice, rock crystal), from 'krýos' (κρύος, frost, icy cold). The ancient Greeks believed that rock crystal (clear quartz) was water that had been frozen so deeply it could never melt — a kind of permanent, divine ice. The word was thus originally a metaphor: crystal meant 'ice.' The scientific sense of a solid with an ordered
The Greeks literally thought quartz was eternal ice. Pliny the Elder wrote that rock crystal was formed 'where the winter snow freezes most intensely' in the high Alps. This belief persisted for centuries. The word 'cryogenics' (the science of extreme cold) comes from the same Greek root 'krýos' — making