a. [f. prec. + -AL.]

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  1.  Chem. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a colloid; in the condition constituting a colloid.

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1861.  T. Graham, in Phil. Trans. (1862), 183. It is proposed to designate substances of this class as colloids, and to speak of their peculiar form of aggregation as the colloidal condition of matter. Ibid., 184. The colloidal is, in fact, a dynamical state of matter: the crystalloidal being the statical condition.

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1876.  B. W. Richardson, in Gd. Words, 788. The muscle-forming food, called sometimes … because it assumes in the organism the colloidal or jelly-like state, colloidal food.

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  2.  Min. = COLLOID a. 3.

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1864.  H. Spencer, Biol., I. 16. The mineral forms of silicic acid … are often found to have passed … from the vitreous or colloidal into the crystalline condition.

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1885.  Geikie, Geol., II. II. ii. 62. Chalcedony, doubtless originally colloidal silica.

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  Hence Colloidality, the colloidal state.

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1861.  T. Graham, in Phil. Trans. (1862), 221. Whether the basis of colloidality may not really be this composite character of the molecule.

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