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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
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calcine
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notes:
{v}
► definition
Definition:1. To reduce to a powder, or to a friable state, by the action of heat; to expel volatile matter from by means of heat, as carbonic acid from limestone, and thus (usually) to produce disintegration; as to, calcine bones.2. To oxidize, as a metal by the action of heat; to reduce to a metallic calx.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
MAM. Of white oil?
SUB. No, sir, of red. F is come over the helm too,
I thank my Maker, in S. Mary's bath,
And shews lac virginis. Blessed be heaven!
I sent you of his faeces there calcined:
Out of that calx, I have won the salt of mercury.
MAM. By pouring on your rectified water?
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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