Cyanide

Quick meaning: Cyanide is a noun meaning (inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, countable) Any compound containing the -C≡N group or the CN⁻ anion.

Meaning

(inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, countable) Any compound containing the -C≡N group or the CN⁻ anion.

More Meanings

1. (inorganic chemistry) Sodium or potassium cyanide, used in the extraction of gold and silver or as a poison.
2. (inorganic chemistry, uncountable) Hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide gas, a poisonous gas.
3. (transitive) To treat or poison with cyanide.

Example Sentences

The birdies all try an' hide / But they still go for peanuts / When coated with cyanide

The vast majority of the victims, on Jones’s orders, had drunk a fruit punch mixture laced with cyanide, a deadly poison. Adults had fed the poisoned liquid to the children, including infants.

Two doctors and a metallurgist from Scotland patented a process for dissolving gold with cyanide in 1887 and patented the recovery of gold from solution using finely divided zinc (zinc precipitation) the following year. […] The first commercial processing plant to use cyanide in the milling circuit was constructed at the Crown mine at Karangahake, New Zealand in 1889.

Word Forms

• cyanides
• cyaniding
• cyanided

Synonyms for cyanide

Depending on context, synonyms include nitrile.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include nitrile, cyanidation, weak, cyanogen.

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