white lead

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English

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Alternative forms

Etymology

In the sense of tin, calque of Latin plumbum album (“tin”, literally “white lead”) already used before our era, as well as plumbum candidum (“tin”, literally “white-shining lead”) and Arabic رَصَاص أَبْيَض (raṣāṣ ʔabyaḍ, “tin”, literally “white lead”), distinguished from plumbum nigrum (“lead”, literally “black lead”) / رَصَاص أَسْوَد (raṣāṣ ʔaswad, “lead”, literally “black lead”), as tin and lead were improperly distinguished before modernity.

Noun

white lead (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) tin, golden marcasite
    • 1671, John Webster, Metallographia: Or, an history of metals., London, page 271:
      It is not amiſs here to give the differences betwixt white Lead, or Tin, Biſmuth, Tin-glaſs, or aſh-coloured Lead, and this common Lead, which they call black Lead;
  2. A basic lead carbonate, particularly (historical) as once widely used for white paint, whitening cosmetics, and early medicine.
    Synonyms: lead white, flake white, silver white, slate white, ceruse, Venetian ceruse, Venetian white, (historical, derogatory) white poison
    • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 40:
      The beginning of a new episode of work for Bradly was an agitated niggling over six-by-four squares of cardboard coated with size and white lead, prepared by himself to save an experimental waste of canvas.
    • 2021, Judith Rainhorn, The Colour of Controversy..., p. 4:
      Such eminent and renowned scientists as Fourcroy, Berthollet and Vauquelin all enthusiastically supported zinc white, the defects of which "are so slight compared to the disadvantages of using white lead, that its adoption cannot be reasonably refused."

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