Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An odorless, colorless, flammable gas, CH4, the major constituent of natural gas, that is used as a fuel and is an important source of hydrogen and a wide variety of organic compounds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A hydrocarbon (CH4) belonging to the paraffin series, a colorless, odorless gas which may be reduced to a liquid by extreme pressure and cold. It is innocuous when breathed in moderate quantity. It burns with a slightly luminous flame, and when mixed with seven or eight volumes of air explodes violently. It occurs in nature in the emanations of volcanoes and petroleum-wells. It also occurs in large quantity in the coalmeasures, and when mixed with air constitutes the dreaded fire-damp of the miners. Also called
marsh-gas .
Wiktionary
- n. organic chemistry, uncountable The simplest aliphatic hydrocarbon, CH4, being a constituent of natural gas.
- n. organic chemistry, countable Any of very many derivatives of methane.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Chem.) A light, colorless, gaseous, inflammable hydrocarbon, CH4; marsh gas. It is the simplest of the aliphatic hydrocarbons. See Marsh gas, under gas.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a colorless odorless gas used as a fuel
Etymologies
- From methyl + -ane. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“This here other thing is what they call a methane proof flame safety light.”
“And this here other thing is what they call a methane approved flame safety light.”
“Global warming may also lead to "tipping points" like melting of Arctic sea ice or release of frozen methane from the Arctic tundra that would lead to abrupt and even more extreme climate change.”
“Now if the IPCC report is overestimating the total amount of hydrocarbons, counting oil, coal, natural gas, and whatever else we may burn (methane in methane hydrates for example), then the criticism still applies.”
“But that's bad, because methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times worse than carbon dioxide.”
“David Wasdell, Director of the Apollo-Gaia Project notes: Feedbacks are temperature driven, so the hotter the temperature, the more bacterial activity, more methane is emitted.”
The Huffington Post: Bianca Jagger: Now Is the Time to Move Beyond Petroleum
“Recent data from the International Journal of Climate Change suggests methane is one hundred times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO² in the first five years.”
The Huffington Post: Bianca Jagger: Now Is the Time to Move Beyond Petroleum
“Coal dust, combined with methane, is an explosive situation for our coal miners.”
The Huffington Post: Heath Harrison: Rahall Touts Seniority, Accomplishments On Mine Safety
“Only one of the issues we face on the planet today moves in an accelerating fashion, unleashing positive feedback effects – e.g. releasing methane from the melting permafrost, the impact on pine forests by increasing insect activity, releasing more as they decay.”
“Per ton, methane is 21 times more damaging, and nitrous oxide 310 times more damaging, as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, when measured over a one hundred year period.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘methane’.
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Coal Mining Terms
Coal mining has engendered fascinating subcultures in industry, labor, music, folklore, environment and energy. It has a rich vocabulary as well, and I've encountered some gorgeous mining words. I...
firedamp, scrip, bituminous, anthracite, company store, blackdamp, brattice, bug dust, tipple, whitedamp, float dust, fly ash and 136 more...
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SCIE - EU nomenclature
All the scientific words found in the official EU nomenclature. For the screening I used Vocabgrabber of the Visual Thesaurus.
abdominal, absorbent, accelerator, accumulator, acebutolol, acetamide, acetanilide, acetate, acetic acid, acetone, acetous, acetyl and 1171 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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Cattle
cattle, cow, beef, steer, heifer, calf, bull, cattle call, Black Angus, Hereford, Holstein, Dwarf Lulu and 402 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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Things from my memory
nigger baby, mexican jumping bean, puddle jumper, mood ring, pet rock, cat scratch fever, taxman, hippie, vaseline, argyrol, mercurchrome, methiolade and 655 more...
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alchemicality
alchemical, alchemy, alchemist, hermetic, hermeticism, philosopher's stone, splendor solis, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur and 258 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Words from "The Ghost Map"
"The Ghost Map", by steven Johnson, is a fascinating account of the (successful) investigation by two men, John Snow and Henry Whitehead, into the means by which cholera is transmitted, following t...
ghost map, epidemiology, dot map, voronoi diagram, index case, cholera, experimentum crucis, vibrio cholerae, microbe, germ theory, public health, animalcula and 61 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for methane.
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