alexpgp | Dontcha just love it...

Тонкозернистая and мелкозернистая are two troublesome words (at least for me) that are often encountered in geological descriptions of rock structure. The problem has to do with the fact that sources such as Multitran and dead wood dictionaries tend to offer the same term or set of terms for the equivalent English: fine grained, close grained, short grained, and so on.

In my experience, "тонко-" as a prefix implies something that would be smaller than "мелко-", and I recall I've run into this problem before. As I have the opportunity and some time right now, I decided to go out on the internet to see if there was any better solution.

First, I managed to find a table from the Tyumen State University that purports to define absolute grain sizes in rock structures of various origin (igneous, metamorphic, and some sedimentary), reproduced below (with my English translations):

Structure Name	Grain size, mm
микрозернистая (micro grained)	less than 0.1
тонкозернистая (???)	0.1 - 1
мелкозернистая (???)	1 - 3
среднезернистая (medium grained)	3 - 5
крупнозернистая (coarse grained)	5 - 10
гигантозернистая	more than 10

(Honestly, I've never seen гигантозернистая, but tentatively, I think I'd call it "macro grained" instead of "giant grained," first, because it balances "micro grained" and second, "giant grained" sounds juvenile.)

I recall further that the previous time this was an issue, I settled on "small grained" for "мелкозернистая" and "fine grained" for "тонкозернистая." This, however, doesn't communicate any kind of relation between the two (unless the reader, like myself, thinks of "fine" denoting something smaller than "small.")

Looking back at Multitran, more the result of idly switching from the browser to another open app, my eyes almost miss "v-f-gr" under "тонкозернистый," denoting "very fine grained."

Wow... I like it!