arsenic
Definitions
General English
- noun a very poisonous substance
- conjunction at the same time that something else happens
- preposition in a particular job
- preposition because of being a particular type of person
- preposition in a particular way
Agriculture
- noun a grey semimetallic chemical element that forms poisonous compounds such as arsenic trioxide, which was formerly used in some medicines
Electronics
- A silver-gray and brittle crystalline semimetallic element whose atomic number is 33. It has over 20 known isotopes, one of which is stable. It is used as a semiconductor dopant, in cable sheaths, and in special solders, among others. Its chemical symbol is As.
- chemical symbolAs
Information & Library Science
Origin
- Ultimately, as is the same word as also. Old English alswā ‘in just this way’ was used in some contexts in which modern English would use as, and as it was weakly stressed in such contexts it gradually dwindled to als or ase and finally to as.
Origin & History of “arsenic”
The term arsenic was originally applied to the lemon-yellow mineral arsenic trisulphide, and its history reveals the reason: for its appears to be based ultimately on Persian zar ‘gold’ (related forms include Sanskrit hari ‘yellowish’, Greek khlōros ‘greenish-yellow’, and English yellow itself). The derivative zarnīk was borrowed into Arabic as zernīkh, which, as usual with Arabic words, was perceived by foreign listeners as constituting an indivisible unit with its definite article al ‘the’ – hence azzernīkh, literally ‘the arsenic trisulphide’. this was borrowed into Greek, where the substance’s supposed beneficial effects on virility led, through association with Greek árrēn ‘male, virile’, to the new forms arrenikón and arsenikón, source of Latin arsenicum and, through Old French, of English arsenic. The original English application was still to arsenic trisulphide (orpiment was its other current name), and it is not until the early 17th century that we find the term used for white arsenic or arsenic trioxide. The element arsenic itself was isolated and so named at the start of the 19th century.
