COMBUSTION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Combustion

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/kəmbˈəstʃən/ Listen

noun

Combustion n.

The state of burning.

(Chem.) The combination of a combustible with a supporter of combustion, producing heat, and sometimes both light and heat. "Combustion results in common cases from the mutual chemical action and reaction of the combustible and the oxygen of the atmosphere, whereby a new compound is formed."

Supporter of combustion (Chem.), a gas, as oxygen, the combination of which with a combustible, as coal, constitutes combustion.

Violent agitation; confusion; tumult. (Obs.) "There (were) great combustions and divisions among the heads of the university." "But say from whence this new combustion springs."

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Etymology of 'Combustion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Combustion" Quotes from Famous Books

... nautis prudentia ventos' has already reached us (from Santo Domingo); the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America, the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time we ...

— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... a little hotly, "if Annette is a spitfire, Mrs. Larkins is a lot of combustion. I think of all the women I know, she has the greatest genius for aggravation. I used to board with her, but as I did not wish to be talked to death ...

— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes! I wish,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair, and discharging ...

— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... speak, and then bottling it. This little performance was at times very telling in its effect—it spoke volumes: it told of a long training in self-repression which still did not come quite naturally: it told of inward combustion, of a tightly cornered but still independent mind. Ladies-in-waiting had seen the Princess run out of her mother's presence to tabber her feet on the inlaid floor of the corridor, thence to return smooth, sweet-tempered, ...

— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... mills, or which causes winds to blow by the unequal rarefaction of the atmosphere. It is from the sun too that the power comes which is liberated in a steam engine. The solar rays enable plants to decompose carbonic acid gas, the product of combustion, and the vegetation thus rendered possible is the source of coal and other combustible bodies. The combustion of coal under a steam boiler therefore merely liberates the power which the sun gave out ...

— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

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