Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To combine or mix (a gas, for example) with volatile hydrocarbons, so as to increase available fuel energy.
  • transitive verb To carburize.
  • noun A carbide.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as carbide.
  • Same as carburize.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Chem.), Archaic A carbide. See carbide
  • transitive verb To combine or to impregnate with carbon, as by passing through or over a liquid hydrocarbon; to carbonize or carburize.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive to react with carbon
  • verb transitive to mix (air) with hydrocarbons, especially with petroleum, as in an internal combustion engine.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb combine with carbon

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From carburet, carbide, from French carbure, from Latin carbō, carbon; see carbon.]

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Examples

  • It has been proposed to carburet and enrich poor coal gas by admixture with it of an oxy-oil gas made under Tatham's patents, in which crude oils are cracked at a comparatively low temperature, and are there mixed with from 12 to 24 per cent. of oxygen gas.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 Various

  • The substance misnamed "black-lead" contains no lead and is a carburet of iron, being composed of carbon and iron.

    Forty Centuries of Ink 1904

  • Now under particular circumstances of action may we not admit the generation of carburet of azote or cyanogen, and if so, as it readily unites with hydrogen, may it not be the miasma which produces malignant bilious fevers, since it is known that hydrocyanic acid is destructive to animal life and a most virulent poison? ...

    James Cutbush An American Chemist, 1788-1823 Edgar Fahs Smith 1891

  • Iron is very widely diffused in the various forms of its ores, oxide, carburet, sulphuret, etc., and by these the geologist is enabled to discover the various changes that have taken place by the agency of chemical affinity for many thousands of ages.

    Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising 1887

  • It is a pure carburet of iron, and might be expected in the vicinity of such iron ores as are found there; and wherever found it is very valuable.

    The Resources of North Carolina: Its Natural Wealth, Condition, and Advantages, as Existing in 1869. Presented to the Capitalists and People of the Central and Northern States 1869

  • In the Heath process, carburet of manganese is employed to aid the conversion of iron into steel, while it also confers on the metal the property of welding and working more soundly under the hammer -- a fact discovered by Mr. Heath while residing in India.

    Industrial Biography Smiles, Samuel, 1812-1904 1863

  • In the Heath process, carburet of manganese is employed to aid the conversion of iron into steel, while it also confers on the metal the property of welding and working more soundly under the hammer -- a fact discovered by Mr. Heath while residing in India.

    Industrial Biography, Iron Workers and Tool Makers Samuel Smiles 1858

  • They are no doubt coloured by a carburet of hydrogen.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • From these facts we are inclined to admit that it is not exclusively by the influence of the solar rays that this carburet of hydrogen is formed in the organs of plants, the presence of which makes the parenchyma appear of

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • The resinous and aromatic smell which filled the hut, seemed to indicate that this coloration is the effect of the decomposition of a carburet of hydrogen, and that the carbon appears in proportion as the hydrogen burns at a low heat.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

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