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fixed air. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Coined by Scottish chemist Joseph Black in 1756 because it can be absorbed, or fixed, by strong bases.
Noun
fixed air (uncountable)
- (chemistry, now historical) Carbon dioxide; carbonic acid.
1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford, published 2009, page 8:The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgement until […] we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and disturbed surface.
1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 246:Lavoisier then elucidated the exchange of gases in the lungs: the air inhaled was converted into Black's fixed air, whereas the nitrogen (‘azote’) remained unchanged.
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