Definitions

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

  • noun A hard, brittle metallic element, found associated with nickel, silver, lead, copper, and iron ores and resembling nickel and iron in appearance. It is used chiefly for magnetic alloys, high-temperature alloys, and in the form of its salts for blue glass and ceramic pigments. Atomic number 27; atomic weight 58.9332; melting point 1,495°C; boiling point 2,927°C; specific gravity 8.9; valence 2, 3. cross-reference: Periodic Table.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Chemical symbol, Co; atomic weight, 58.8. A metal of a steel-gray color and a specific gravity variously given at from 8.52 to 8.95.

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

  • noun (Chem.) A tough, lustrous, reddish white metal of the iron group, not easily fusible, and somewhat magnetic. Atomic weight 59.1. Symbol Co.
  • noun A commercial name of a crude arsenic used as fly poison.
  • noun Same as Erythrite.
  • noun a dark blue pigment consisting of some salt of cobalt, as the phosphate, ignited with alumina; -- called also cobalt ultramarine, and Thenard's blue.
  • noun earthy arseniate of cobalt.
  • noun (Min.) See Cobaltite.
  • noun a pigment consisting essentially of the oxides of cobalt and zinc; -- called also Rinman's green.
  • noun (Chem.) a yellow crystalline powder, regarded as a double nitrite of cobalt and potassium.

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

  • noun A chemical element (symbol Co) with an atomic number of 27.
  • noun Cobalt blue.

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

  • noun a hard ferromagnetic silver-white bivalent or trivalent metallic element; a trace element in plant and animal nutrition

Etymologies

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

[German Kobalt, from Middle High German kobolt, variant of kobold, goblin (from silver miners' belief that cobalt had been placed by goblins who had stolen the silver); see kobold.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From German Kobold ("goblin").

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Examples

  • In sixth grade, I started my own class newspaper, which my friends and I typed laboriously on the old fashionedmimeographsheets (the kind with the blue backing which left those same stubby fingers smudged in cobalt ink).

    2009 December « Becca’s Byline 2009

  • In sixth grade, I started my own class newspaper, which my friends and I typed laboriously on the old fashionedmimeographsheets (the kind with the blue backing which left those same stubby fingers smudged in cobalt ink).

    What’s In A Name? 2009

  • Like the plate, the walls were trimmed in cobalt blue and painted a dusty gold.

    Three Tamales for the Señor Part One 2008

  • Like the plate, the walls were trimmed in cobalt blue and painted a dusty gold.

    Three Tamales for the Señor Part One 2008

  • But if a few kilos of plutonium wrapped in cobalt finds its way to Mecca as the nursery schools of Tel Aviv are turned into Beslan *, I am sure there would be a little relief, perhaps some joy in the new Washington I visualize here, and perhaps in Berlin, too.

    Roman Times, Israeli Times 2008

  • Like the plate, the walls were trimmed in cobalt blue and painted a dusty gold.

    Three Tamales for the Señor Part One 2008

  • Zaffer, an oxide of cobalt, is the name given to the blue glass formed when cobalt is mixed with potash and sand, ground flints or other frits.

    The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe 2006

  • Raw cobalt is a silvery gray or whitish color often resembling silver, compact and heavy, as Caspar Neumann described it. 19 John Hill noted other general characteristics of the "genus" cobalt: fine, brittle, not fusible.

    The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe 2006

  • The mineral which contains cobalt is arsenide, known as smaltite.

    Cobalt Mineral Conditions 1906

  • BMO analysts said they remain comfortable with their short-term cobalt forecast of

    Mineweb - Daily news headlines 2009

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  • Co.

    December 16, 2007