precipitate

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To throw from or as if from a great height; hurl downward: "The finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below” ( Thornton Wilder).
2. v. To cause to happen, especially suddenly or prematurely. See Synonyms at speed.
3. v. Meteorology To cause (water vapor) to condense and fall from the air as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
4. v. Chemistry To cause (a solid substance) to be separated from a solution.
5. v. Meteorology To condense and fall from the air as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
6. v. Chemistry To be separated from a solution as a solid.
7. v. To fall or be thrown headlong: an ailing economy that precipitated into ruin despite foreign intervention.
8. adj. Moving rapidly and heedlessly; speeding headlong.
9. adj. Acting with or marked by excessive haste and lack of due deliberation. See Synonyms at impetuous, reckless.
10. adj. Occurring suddenly or unexpectedly.
11. n. Chemistry A solid or solid phase separated from a solution.
12. n. A product resulting from a process, event, or course of action.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To cast down headlong; fling from a precipice or height; hurl downward.
2. To cause to fall as a sediment to the bottom of a vessel; reduce from a state of solution to a solid form, as by means of a reagent or chemical force.
3. To drive forcibly; cause to hasten onward.
4. To hasten; bring hastily to pass; hurry up: as, to precipitate a flight.
5. To hasten intemperately or rashly; hence, to spoil; ruin.
6. To fall headlong.
7. To make haste; hurry; proceed without deliberation.
8. In chem., to separate from a solution as a precipitate.
9. Hurled headlong; plunging or rushing down, as by a steep descent; headlong.
10. Steep; precipitous.
11. Hasty; acting without due deliberation; rash.
12. Hastily brought to pass; speedy; hurried; sudden.
13. Synonyms and Precipitous now always expresses the physical attribute of a headlong steepness; precipitate the moral quality of being very hasty or overhasty. Other uses are obsolete or figurative.
14. n. In Chem., any substance which, having been dissolved in a fluid, falls to the bottom of the vessel on the addition of some other substance capable of producing decomposition of the compound. The term is generally applied when the separation takes place in a flocculent or pulverulent form, in opposition to crystallization, which implies a like separation in an angular form. But chemists call a mass of crystals a precipitate when they subside so suddenly that their proper crystalline shape cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. Substances which fall or settle down, as earthy matter in water, are called sediments, the operating cause being mechanical and not chemical.
15. n. Fusible white precipitate, colorless crystals, soluble in water (probably of the composition NHg₂C1.3NH₄Cl), which melt and then decompose on being heated: produced by boiling the infusible white precipitate with a solution of ammonium chlorid.
16. n. An abbreviated term sometimes used to signify the bright yellow precipitate of ammonium phosphomolybdate frequently obtained in analysis as a proof of the presence of, or as the means of quantitatively determining, phosphorus or the radical of phosphoric acid and phosphates.

Wiktionary

1. n. A product resulting from a process, event, or course of action.
2. n. chemistry A solid that exits the liquid phase of a solution.
3. adj. headlong; falling steeply or vertically.
4. adj. Very steep; precipitous.
5. adj. With a hasty impulse; hurried; headstrong.
6. adj. Moving with excessive speed or haste.
7. adj. Performed very rapidly or abruptly.
8. v. transitive To make something happen suddenly and quickly; hasten.
9. v. transitive To throw an object or person from a great height.
10. v. transitive To send violently into a certain state or condition.
11. v. intransitive, chemistry To come out of a liquid solution into solid form.
12. v. transitive, chemistry To separate a substance out of a liquid solution into solid form.
13. v. intransitive, meteorology To have water in the air fall to the ground, for example as rain, snow, sleet, or hail; be deposited as condensed droplets.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Overhasty; rash.
2. adj. Lacking due deliberation or care; hurried; said or done before the time.
3. adj. Falling, flowing, or rushing, with steep descent; headlong.
4. adj. obsolete Ending quickly in death; brief and fatal.
5. n. (Chem.) An insoluble substance separated from a solution in a concrete state by the action of some reagent added to the solution, or of some force, such as heat or cold. The precipitate may fall to the bottom (whence the name), may be diffused through the solution, or may float at or near the surface.
6. n. atmospheric moisture condensed as rain or snow, etc.; same as precipitation{5}.
7. v. To throw headlong; to cast down from a precipice or height.
8. v. To urge or press on with eager haste or violence; to cause to happen, or come to a crisis, suddenly or too soon.
9. v. (Chem.) To separate from a solution, or other medium, in the form of precipitate.
10. v. rare To dash or fall headlong.
11. v. rare To hasten without preparation.
12. v. (Chem.) To separate from a solution as a precipitate. See Precipitate, n.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. fall from clouds
2. v. bring about abruptly
3. adj. done with very great haste and without due deliberation
4. n. a precipitated solid substance in suspension or after settling or filtering
5. v. separate as a fine suspension of solid particles
6. v. hurl or throw violently
7. v. fall vertically, sharply, or headlong