A rare or hypothetical mineral, possibly containing elements related to speech or sound properties, or a crystalline compound with unusual acoustic qualities.
From Greek aphthonos (unceasing, abundant in sound) + -ite (stone). The mineral name suggests either continuous or abundant resonance properties, though this term is extremely obscure in modern geology.
This mineral name is so rare that it barely appears in mineralogical databases—it's like a ghost word that shows us how 19th-century scientists enthusiastically named every material they found, even ones science eventually forgot about.
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