onyx

Before 1300 as onix, in about 1250 as oneche, from Old French oniche or onix, from Latin onyx, from Ancient Greek ὄνυξ (onyx).[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈɒnɪks/

onyx (countable and uncountable, plural onyxes)

1. (mineralogy) A banded variety of chalcedony, a cryptocrystalline form of quartz.
2. A jet-black color, named after the gemstone.

   onyx colour:  

onyx (not comparable)

1. jet-black
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981:

     , Genesis, 2:12

     And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/7/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎:

     There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of the sky : a black night and very silent on Cimiez ; and a black and silent prospect from the verandah […]

• sardonyx

From Ancient Greek ὄνυξ (ónux, “nail”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈo.nyks/, [ˈɔ.nʏks]

onyx m (genitive onychis); third declension

1. onyx, yellow marble
2. A yellowish precious stone
3. The female of a mussel of the scallop species

Third declension.

• onyx in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• onyx in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• onyx in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• onyx in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

onyx m (plural onyx)

1. Obsolete spelling of ónix (used in Portugal until September 1911 and died out in Brazil during the 1920s).