orogeny
/ɒˈɹɒdʒɪni/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.08 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The process of mountain building by the upward folding of the Earth's crust.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Coordinate term: taphrogeny"
- "The effects of Acadian orogeny are concentrated in central Newfoundland, decreasing in intensity to the east and west (Williams, this volume)."
- "When I asked Geoff Milnes what age the rocks were before they were turned into uncompromising gneisses by the Alpine orogeny he made a rueful face."
- "In Canada the fold-thrust belt formed during what is termed the Columbian orogeny (Monger and Price, 2002). Because the Sevier and Columbian orogenies were contemporaneous and constitute a single continuous and linear belt of rocks and structures, I use the term Cordillera orogeny to refer to the Cretaceous deformation that created the entire belt, whereas the term Laramide is used only to refer to a series of Late Cretaceous—Tertiary basement-involved uplifts, for the most part located in the Rocky Mountain foreland east of the fold-thrust belt and mainly south of the Lewis and Clark lineament (Fig. 1) in keeping with the original definition by Armstrong (1968)."
Etymology
From French orogénie, from Ancient Greek ὄρος (óros, “mountain, high ground”) + γενεια (geneia, “creation, birth, making”). By surface analysis, oro- + -geny.
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ɒˈɹɒdʒɪni/