amber
amber hard translucent fossilized resin originating from extinct coniferous trees of the Tertiary period, typically yellowish in colour. It has been used in jewellery for centuries. A piece of amber was traditionally used as an amulet to attract lovers.
Amber often contains the bodies of trapped insects (the plot of Michael Crichton's thriller Jurassic Park and the 1993 Spielberg film based on it turned on the hypothesis that dinosaur DNA from the blood on which such insects had fed could be recovered from the insect bodies).
The word is recorded from late Middle English (also in sense ambergris), and comes via Old French from Arabic ῾anbar ‘ambergris’, later ‘amber’.
See also fly in amber.
Amber often contains the bodies of trapped insects (the plot of Michael Crichton's thriller Jurassic Park and the 1993 Spielberg film based on it turned on the hypothesis that dinosaur DNA from the blood on which such insects had fed could be recovered from the insect bodies).
The word is recorded from late Middle English (also in sense ambergris), and comes via Old French from Arabic ῾anbar ‘ambergris’, later ‘amber’.
See also fly in amber.
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