Metal definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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American Heritage Dictionary (11)

noun Any of a category of electropositive elements that usually have a shiny surface, are generally good conductors of heat and electricity, and can be melted or fused, hammered into thin sheets, or drawn into wires. Typical metals form salts with nonmetals, basic oxides with oxygen, and alloys with one another.
noun An alloy of two or more metallic elements.
noun An object made of metal.

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Century Dictionary (77)

An elementary substance, or one which in the present state of chemical science is undecompos able, and which possesses opacity, luster of a peculiar kind (commonly called metallic, because very characteristic of the metals), conductivity for heat and electricity, and plasticity, or capability of being drawn, squeezed, or hammered with change of shape but no loss of continuity. Examples of metals possessing all these qualities, although in varying degree, are gold, silver, copper, iron, lead”, and tin, all of which have been known from remote antiquity; and on the characters which they possess the idea of a metal was, and mainly still is, founded. These metals also have a high specific gravity, the lightest of them (tin) being over seven times as dense as water. Of the prehistorically known metals, gold, silver, and copper occur more or less abundantly in the native or metallic form, and must have been noticed, and in all probability utilized, in the most remote antiquity, by various nations and over widely extended areas. Iron also occurs native, especially in the form of meteoric iron, and in this way may have first become known and utilized. But iron is now, and has been from time immemorial, smelted from its ores in countries which, from almost every other point of view than the metallurgical, might properly be regarded as uncivilized. The use of iron other than meteoric was not, however, known in the New World before the advent of Europeans. Tin and lead do not occur in the metallic form in nature, unless in very minute quantity; hence, where used, these metals must have been obtained by the metallurgic treatment of their ores. In the case of tin and zinc, as well as of other metals not occurring native, it was not until long after some knowledge had been attained in regard to the practical use of their ores, either by themselves or as ingredients in various alloys, that any accurate idea was obtained of the metals themselves. Thus, brass was certainly made long before anything definite had been learned in regard to the metal zinc, and it is not at all unlikely that the same was the case with bronze and one of its constituents, tin. In addition to the six metals already mentioned, quicksilver was known to the Greeks and Romans in classical times; and this metal also occurs not infrequently in the metallic form, so that its early discovery is not a matter to excite surprise. The anomalous occurrence of quicksilver as a liquid at the ordinary temperature was the reason why neither Pliny nor Isidore nor Geber included it among the metals; nor was it so included by writers on chemistry and metallurgy until after it had been discovered that this fiuid could be frozen at a not very low temperature, and that when frozen it was malleable. It was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that antimony, bismuth, and zinc became known; but their ores had long been in use, although, in the case of the two former metals, only to a very limited extent. The discovery of these metals considerably enlarged the scope of the word metallic, since it became necessary to admit that metals could be brittle; this was still further exemplified in the case of the metal arsenic, discovered in 1694 (its oxidized combinations had long been known and utilized), which, although having a metallic luster, is decidedly brittle. This brittleness of substances otherwise metallic in appearance led to their being placed in a class by themselves as “semi-metals,” the idea that malleability was a necessary attribute of a metal having come down from the Arabian chemists, and maintaining its hold for many centuries. About the middle and in the latter half of the eighteenth century the number of known metals was greatly increased. In 1741 platina was discovered, but the metals which are always associated with it—osmium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium, etc.—were not detected until much later. At about the same time as platina, nickel and cobalt were recognized as elements—that is, were first separated and distinguished from their ores, which had been long known and (in the case of cobalt, at least) utilized to a limited extent. Toward the end of the eighteenth century manganese, molybdena, tellurium, uranium, titanium, and chromium became known. About the beginning of the nineteenth century several of the metals of the platina family—palladium, iridium, osmium, rhodium—were separated from the complex alloy known as native platina. Up to this time all the known substances to which the name metal was applied were much heavier than water, and also decidedly heavier than those considered as non-metallic. Hence, as the old and long-prevailing idea that all metals were malleable had been done away with, a high specific gravity began to be considered as their most important characteristic. Thus we find Cronstedt, who was one of the earliest systematic writers on mineralogy (the first edition of his work was published in 1758), defining metals as “those mineral bodies which with respect to their volume are the heaviest of all hitherto known bodies.” With the discovery, by Davy, in 1807, of the metallic nature of the bases of the alkalis a great change took place in this respect, for these substances, metallic from many points of view, especially with reference to their chemical affinities, are lighter than water, and at first, on this account, were by some chemists not admitted to rank as metals. The discovery of the metallic bases of the alkalis was followed by that of the bases of the earths—calcium, barium, and strontium, 1807; zirconium, 1824; aluminium, glucinium, and yttrium, 1828. These metals are all light as compared with the older metals, but heavy in comparison with the metallic bases of the alkalis, the lightest of which—lithium, discovered in 1818—has only a little more than half the specific gravity of water. Cadmium, another heavy metal associated with zinc in its mode of occurrence, and of some importance in the arts, was also separated from its oxid in 1818. Many metals have been discovered within the past few years, all of great interest from the scientific point of view, but no one of them of economical importance, or occurring in sufficient-quantity to be utilized to any extent even if possessing valuable properties. So doubtful and difficult are the chemical reactions of some of these elements that their exact number cannot be stated. Several have been worked over by chemists for years without any definite conclusion having been reached; several, after having been accepted for a while, have been dropped from the list. There are about seventy generally recognized elements (see element), although some three or four of these may still be considered as more or less doubtful. Of the seventy thirteen are decidedly non-metallic; these are sulphur, phosphorus, fluorin, chlorin, iodine, bromine, silicon, boron, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and selenium; all the other elements are considered to be metals, and selenium was formerly generally so considered, but latterly it has been decidedly included among the non-metals, and the name has been changed by some to selenion, to make it correspond with carbon, boron, and silicon, with which elements it is to a certain extent chemically affiliated. Tellurium, on the other hand, although closely related chemically to sulphur and selenium, has always been classed among the metals, chiefly because, although brittle, it has a decided metallic luster. The names of the metals, so far as is possible, all end in -um; even platina is frequently written platinum. A division of the elements into metals and non-metals is recognized by chemists at the present time as being rather a matter of convenience from the popular point of view than as one capable of exact scientific definition. The words metallic and metal, however, cannot be dispensed with in common life and the arts, and their use can very rarely lead to any confusion. The exceptions to this general statement that the metals have a “metallic” luster, and that the non-metals do not, are, on the whole, extremely insignificant. Only in the case of selenium and phosphorus in certain of their allotropic forms could there be any question as to whether the term metallic luster could properly be used with reference to a non-metal.
In printing and type-founding See type-metal.
The material of glass, pottery, etc., in a state of fusion. If no tongues of flame make their appearance, the calcination is complete. The contents of the pot are then shovelled out, and allowed to cool and harden into what is technically called metal or “prussiate cake.” Spons' Encyc. Manuf., I. 270. White glass or enamel is made by adding either arsenic or the oxide of tin to the melted metal. Workshop Receipts, 1st ser., p. 54.

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You all know how rare the metal is and how badly our government needs it now in the war. — Mystery on Pluto
Maybe the metal was another form of what the transporter was made of. — Serpents's Silver
I went immediately to inspect the furnace, and found that the metal was all curdled; an accident which we express by being caked. — The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Using an alcohol-based disinfectant, the metal was then cleaned to remove any remaining tissue or hair cells, and they moved on to the next barb to repeat the process. — Blood Lure
This metal was his negotiation point, and his knowledge of how to handle it almost got him down to Huntsville. — FSF,March2008

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