evaporation

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of resolving or the state of being resolved into vapor; the conversion of a solid or liquid by heat into vapor, fumes, or steam; vaporization. The process of evaporation is constantly going on at the surface of the earth, but principally at the surface of the sea and other bodies of water. The vapor thus formed, being specifically lighter than atmospheric air, rises to considerable heights above the earth's surface, and afterward, by a partial condensation, forms clouds, and finally descends in rain. The effect of evaporation is to reduce the temperature of the evaporating surface, and the evaporation of certain volatile liquids, such as ether, produces an intense degree of cold. Evaporation by direct heat (boiling down) is often practised on fluids, especially in pharmacy and cookery, in order to reduce them to a denser consistence, or to obtain in a dry and separate state the fixed matters contained in them.
2. n. The matter evaporated or exhaled; vapor.
3. n. In algebra, the disappearance of a solution of a system of equations by passing off to infinity. Thus, the solution of the two equations x—ky = a and x—y = b, which disappears when k = 1, is said to pass off by evaporation.

Wiktionary

1. n. The process of a liquid converting to the gaseous state.
2. n. The process in which all or a portion of liquid (in a container) is turned into vapour, in order to increase the concentration of solid matter in the mixture.
3. n. archaic That which is evaporated; vapour.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The process by which any substance is converted from a liquid state into, and carried off in, vapor.
2. n. The transformation of a portion of a fluid into vapor, in order to obtain the fixed matter contained in it in a state of greater consistence.
3. n. That which is evaporated; vapor.
4. n. (Steam Engine) See Vaporization.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the process of becoming a vapor
2. n. the process of extracting moisture