fixed air
English
Etymology
Coined by Scottish chemist Joseph Black in 1756 because it can be absorbed, or fixed, by strong bases.
Noun
- (chemistry, now historical) Carbon dioxide; carbonic acid.
- 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford 2009, p. 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 2016, p. 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.
- 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford 2009, p. 8: