steel

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A generally hard, strong, durable, malleable alloy of iron and carbon, usually containing between 0.2 and 1.5 percent carbon, often with other constituents such as manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum, copper, tungsten, cobalt, or silicon, depending on the desired alloy properties, and widely used as a structural material.
2. n. Something, such as a sword, that is made of steel.
3. n. A quality suggestive of this alloy, especially a hard, unflinching character.
4. n. Steel gray.
5. adj. Made with, relating to, or consisting of steel: steel beams; the steel industry; a bicycle with a steel frame.
6. adj. Very firm or strong: a steel grip.
7. adj. Of a steel gray.
8. v. To cover, plate, edge, or point with steel.
9. v. To make hard, strong, or obdurate; strengthen: He steeled himself for disappointment.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A modified form of iron, not occurring in nature, but known and manufactured from very early times, and at the present time of the highest importance in its various applications to the wants of man. For certain purposes, and especially for the manufacture of tools and weapons, there is no metal or metallic alloy which could take the place of steel. The most essential features of steel as compared with iron are elasticity and hardness, and these qualities can be varied in amount to a very extraordinary degree, in the same piece of steel, by slight changes in the manipulation. Steel can be hardened so as to cut glass, by rapid cooling after being strongly healed, and it can be tempered, by reheating after hardening, so as permanently to take the precise degree of hardness best adapted to the use to which it is to be applied. (See temper.) Steel has been known from very early times, but where and how first manufactured is not known. That it has long been in use in India, and that it is still manufactured in that country by methods precisely similar to those in use long ago are well-known facts. (See wootz.) It is thought by some to have been known to the pyramid-builders; but this has not yet been demonstrated, and the same is true of the ancient Semites. The words translated ‘steel’ in the authorized version of the Old Testament signify ‘copper’ or ‘bronze,’ and are usually rendered ‘brass,’ ‘brazen.’ That steel was clearly recognized as something distinct from iron by the author or authors of the Homeric poems cannot be proved. The earliest known and simplest method of reducing iron from its ore—the so-called “direct process”—is capable also of furnishing steel, although a sufficiently homogeneous product cannot be easily obtained by this method. This would explain how steel became known at an early period, and why it was so long before it became an article of general use, with well-established methods of manufacture. Steel is a form of iron in which the amount of carbon is intermediate between that in wrought- and that in cast-iron, and this carbon does not exist in the steel in the form of graphite, but is either combined with or dissolved in it; but the subject of the relation of carbon to iron is one of difficulty, and is now undergoing investigation at the hands of various skilled metallurgical chemists. Other ingredients besides carbon are also present in steel—namely, silicon, manganese, sulphur, and phosphorus. Of these the two first mentioned are probably never entirely wanting, and they are not especially undesirable or injurious, as is the case with the two others, of which only traces can be permitted in the best quality of steel. They are all, however, different from carbon, which latter is regarded as an essential element of steel, while the others may be looked upon as being more or less of the nature of impurities. The quality of steel varies with the amount of carbon present, and the effect of this latter element varies with the amount of impurity (silicon, etc.) present in the steel. The larger the amount of impurity, the larger is the quantity of carbon required to give to the iron the character of steel. In the case of the best bar-iron, a little over 0.3 per cent. of carbon is sufficient to give it a steely character; from 0.5 to 0.65 per cent. of carbon, according to the purity of the iron, gives a steel which can be hardened so as to strike fire with flint. Iron containing from 1 to 1.5 per cent. of carbon gives steel which, after tempering, combines the maximum hardness with the maximum tenacity. One per cent. of carbon gives, on the whole, the most generally useful steel. With more than 1.5 per cent. of carbon the tenacity and weldability of the steel are diminished, although the hardness may be increased. With more than 1.74 per cent. of carbon the steel ceases to be weldable, and is with difficulty drawn out under the hammer; and from 1.8 to 2.0 per cent. is usually considered as the limit between steel and cast-iron, the steel with that amount breaking when hammered after softening by heat. Since steel is intermediate between wrought- and cast-iron in the amount of carbon which it contains, it is evident that it might be made either by carburizing the former or decarburizing the latter. The method of carburization, or cementation as it is generally called, is one of the oldest, perhaps the most ancient, as, although differing greatly in the details, in the essentials it is the same as the process by which the Indian wootz is manufactured. The cementation process was described in detail by Réaumur in a work published in 1722. By this method blister-steel is obtained, and this is further worked up into spring-, shear-, and double-shear steel by one or more processes of fagoting, welding, and hammering or rolling, the object of this being to give the metal greater homogeneity. A great addition to the value of this process was the invention by Huntsman, in 1740, of cast-steel, the product of the fusion in crucibles, under suitable manipulation, of blister-steel, which process is still in use as first arranged almost without change. By this method, when iron of a sufficiently high grade is used, the finest quality of steel is produced, and it is only steel manufactured in this way which can be used for the best tools, weapons, and cutting instruments of all kinds. The methods of producing steel by the decarburization of pig-iron are numerous and varied. The Styrian method of decarburization in the open-hearth finery, whereby a material called raw steel is produced, was once of very considerable importance, but is now little used. The method of decarburizing pig-iron by puddling, which is similar in principle to the ordinary puddling process used for converting pig- into wrought-iron, is also somewhat extensively employed, especially on the continent of Europe, the product being called puddled steel, this being drawn into bars, which are cut up and remelted, as is done with blister-steel in manufacturing cast-steel. There are various methods for producing steel by fusing pig-iron with iron ores, or with wrought-iron, or with both together. The Uchatius process belongs to this class of processes, but is of comparatively small importance; but the processes known as the “Siemens,” the “Martin,” and the “Siemens-Martin” are extensively employed. The steel made by any of these processes is generally called open-hearth steel, as the work of decarburizing the pig is done in the open-hearth regenerative furnace. The difference between these processes is simply that in the first-named the pig-iron is treated with certain iron ores without the addition of wrought-iron (scrap-iron); in the second the pig is melted with scrap-iron; and in the third both scrap and ore are used together: hence the names by which the first two of these modifications of what is essentially the same process are known—pig-and-ore, pig-arid-scrap—the third, or the “Siemens-Martin,” being the most commonly employed. By far the most important of all steel-producing processes, if only the amount of the metal produced is considered, is the “pneumatic” or “Bessemer” process, invented by Sir Henry Bessemer about 1856, which consists in blowing air through molten pig-iron in a “converter,” or vessel of iron lined with a refractory material—the oxidation of the carbon and silicon which the pig contains, together with a small part of the iron itself, furnishing sufficient heat to keep the material in a fluid state while the operation of decarburization goes on. After complete decarburization of the iron, a certain amount of carbon is restored to the metal by the introduction of spiegeleisen or ferromanganese; this extremely important addition to the Bessemer process, without which it would hardly have been a success, was contributed by R. F. Mushet. The Bessemer process, as conducted in a converter lined with the ordinary silicious or “acid” material, is suited only for working iron which is practically free from phosphorus and sulphur, or such as is made from ore like that of Lake Superior, from which all, or nearly all, the Bessemer steel made in the United States is manufactured. By the so-called “basic” or “Thomas-Gilchrist” process, the converter having a basic (calcined dolomite) lining, iron containing a considerable amount of phosphorus is treated, and a fair quality of steel produced, the phosphorus passing into the slag during the operation, as is the case in puddling. The metal produced by the Bessemer process is generally called Bessemer steel, but some consider it more correct to call it ingot-iron. It can be produced of various grades by varying the amount of carbon which it contains, and is a material of the highest value for structural purposes—as being cheaper, and having more durability, than wrought-iron made by puddling-although of no value for the purposes for which the older higher-class steels are employed. Its principal use is for rails, and during the past few years from seventy to eighty per cent. of the Bessemer steel made in the United States has been used for that purpose.
2. n. A single span of the Forth Bridge is nearly as long as two Eiffel Towers turned horizontally and tied together in the middle, and the whole forms a complicated steel structure weighing 15,000 tons, erected without the possibility of any intermediate support, the lace-like fabric of the bridge soaring as high as the top of St. Paul's. The steel of which the compression members of the structure are composed contains
3. n. of carbon and
4. n. of manganese. The parts subjected to extension do not contain more than
5. n. of carbon.
6. n. Something made of steel. Specifically— A cutting or piercing weapon; especially, a sword. Compare cold steel, below.
7. n. A piece of steel for striking sparks from flint to ignite tinder or match.
8. n. A mirror.
9. n. A cylindrical or slightly tapering rod of steel, sometimes having fine parallel longitudinal lines, used for sharpening carving-knives, etc.
10. n. A strip of steel used to stiffen a corset, or to expand a woman's skirt.
11. Made of steel: as, a steel plate or buckle.
12. Hard as steel; inflexible; unyielding.
13. To fit with steel, as by pointing, edging, overlaying, electroplating, or the like.
14. To iron (clothes).
15. To make hard as steel; render strong, rigid, inflexible, determined, etc.; make firm or stubborn.
16. To cause to resemble steel in smoothness or polish.
17. n. An obsolete form of steal, stale.
18. n. Steel made from the ore by a direct process.
19. n. Such steel rolled in the shapes adapted for these uses, such as angles, tees, channels, I-beams, T-beams, Z-bars, and deck-beams.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable, countable A metal alloy of mostly iron plus carbon, harder than pure elemental iron but malleable when hot.
2. n. countable A tool used to sharpen or hone knives; a honing steel.
3. n. countable A sword.
4. n. music A type of slide used in the practice of steel guitar.
5. n. uncountable, figuratively Hardness; strength in adversity; mettle.
6. v. To harden.
7. v. To cover with steel
8. v. To hone with a honing steel.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Metal) A variety of iron intermediate in composition and properties between wrought iron and cast iron (containing between one half of one per cent and one and a half per cent of carbon), and consisting of an alloy of iron with an iron carbide. Steel, unlike wrought iron, can be tempered, and retains magnetism. Its malleability decreases, and fusibility increases, with an increase in carbon.
2. n. An instrument or implement made of steel.
3. n. A weapon, as a sword, dagger, etc.
4. n. An instrument of steel (usually a round rod) for sharpening knives.
5. n. A piece of steel for striking sparks from flint.
6. n. Fig.: Anything of extreme hardness; that which is characterized by sternness or rigor.
7. n. (Med.) A chalybeate medicine.
8. v. To overlay, point, or edge with steel
9. v. To make hard or strong; hence, to make insensible or obdurate.
10. v. To cause to resemble steel, as in smoothness, polish, or other qualities.
11. v. (Elec.) To cover, as an electrotype plate, with a thin layer of iron by electrolysis. The iron thus deposited is very hard, like steel.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. cover, plate, or edge with steel
2. n. a cutting or thrusting weapon that has a long metal blade and a hilt with a hand guard
3. n. knife sharpener consisting of a ridged steel rod
4. v. get ready for something difficult or unpleasant
5. n. an alloy of iron with small amounts of carbon; widely used in construction; mechanical properties can be varied over a wide range