The Largest Gold Nugget Weighed Over 70 Kilograms
A nugget is a small lump, especially of gold. The biggest ever found was too heavy for one person to lift.
A nugget is a small rough lump, especially of precious metal. The record belongs to Australia: the Welcome Stranger, found near Moliagul in Victoria in 1869, weighed over seventy kilograms and had to be broken up on an anvil before it could be weighed. It was lying barely three centimetres below the surface.
- A lump of metal. *A gold nugget.*
- A small valuable item. *A nugget of information.*
- A piece of food. *Chicken nuggets.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | nugget | A gold nugget. |
| Plural | nuggets | Small nuggets. |
| Adjective | nuggety | A nuggety build. |
| Related | ingot | A silver ingot. |
| Related | placer | Placer gold. |
How it is used in a sentence
- A nugget of useful advice.Figurative.
- The Welcome Stranger was found in 1869.The largest ever.
- Nuggets form in placer deposits.Concentrated by water.
Gold facts
- Placer deposits — where flowing water concentrates heavy gold
- Panning — separating gold by density in a pan of water
- Fool's gold — iron pyrite, which is brittle and cubic
- Density — gold is about nineteen times denser than water
- All the gold ever mined — would form a cube of roughly twenty-two metres a side
Of uncertain origin, recorded from the nineteenth century, possibly from dialect *nug*, a lump or block.
How do you tell gold from fool's gold?
Gold is soft and malleable; pyrite is brittle and shatters. Pyrite also forms cubic crystals, which gold does not.
Why do nuggets appear in rivers?
Flowing water sorts material by density, and gold is far denser than sand, so it settles in predictable places.