carbon tet
- noun
- /ˈkɑrbən tɛt/
- Archaic
:
tetracloruro de carbono
- The laboratory stopped using carbon tet due to its hazardous effects on health.
Examples
-
In the past, carbon tet was a common solvent for cleaning machinery.
-
Many industries have replaced carbon tet with safer alternatives.
-
Fire extinguishers once contained carbon tet, but it's now considered too dangerous.
-
The lab used carbon tet for cleaning equipment.
-
In the past, carbon tet was a common solvent for cleaning machinery.
-
The laboratory stopped using carbon tet due to its hazardous effects on health.
-
Many industries have replaced carbon tet with safer alternatives.
Synonyms
A colorless toxic liquid once used to clean things or put out fires, now avoided because it harms the body
A clear liquid once used to clean things that is now used less because it is poisonous
Surface Forms
Morphology
carbon + tet
This is a specialized chemical name whose overall meaning (a specific toxic solvent) cannot be predicted from the parts: 'carbon' identifies an element but gives no clue to a solvent liquid, and 'tet' is not a recognizable English morpheme for a B1 learner (it appears as an unanalyzable abbreviation). Because the term is lexicalized and domain-specific rather than compositional, a learner who only knows the constituent words would not be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Carbon tet comes from the longer chemical name carbon tetrachloride. The word carbon names the single carbon atom and tet comes from 'tetra', which means 'four' for the four chlorine atoms, so people shortened the long name to carbon tet, and it became the name for the toxic liquid once used for cleaning.
