Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Capable of burning, corroding, dissolving, or eating away by chemical action.
  • adjective Sarcastic or cutting; biting.
  • adjective Given to making caustic remarks.
  • noun A caustic material or substance.
  • noun A hydroxide of a light metal.
  • noun The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The curved surface to which all the rays of a conical pencil of light entering a refractive medium are tangential.
  • Capable of burning, corroding, or destroying the tissue of animal substances. See causticity.
  • Figuratively, severely critical or sarcastic; cutting: as, a caustic remark.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.
  • noun (Optics) A caustic curve or caustic surface.
  • adjective Capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance by chemical action; burning; corrosive; searing.
  • adjective Severe; satirical; sharp.
  • adjective (Optics) a curve to which the ray of light, reflected or refracted by another curve, are tangents, the reflecting or refracting curve and the luminous point being in one plane.
  • adjective See under Lime.
  • adjective (Chem.) the solid hydroxides potash, KOH, and soda, NaOH, or solutions of the same.
  • adjective nitrate of silver, lunar caustic.
  • adjective (Optics) a surface to which rays reflected or refracted by another surface are tangents. Caustic curves and surfaces are called catacaustic when formed by reflection, and diacaustic when formed by refraction.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Capable of burning, corroding or destroying organic tissue
  • adjective of language, etc. sharp, bitter, cutting, biting, sarcastic
  • noun Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.
  • noun optics, computer graphics The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object.
  • noun mathematics The envelope of reflected or refracted rays for a given curve.
  • noun informal, chemistry caustic soda

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any chemical substance that burns or destroys living tissue
  • adjective harsh or corrosive in tone
  • adjective of a substance, especially a strong acid; capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English caustik, from Latin causticus, from Greek kaustikos, from kaustos, from kaiein, kau-, to burn.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Greek καυστός (kaustos, "burnt"), via the Latin causticus ("burning").

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Examples

  • While on this subject of caustic potash, it cannot be too often repeated that _caustic potash_ is a totally different article to _caustic soda_, though just like it in appearance, and therefore often sold as such.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 360, November 25, 1882 Various

  • The common caustic, called _lunar caustic_, is a compound formed by the union of nitric acid and silver; and it is supposed to owe its caustic qualities to the oxygen contained in the nitric acid.

    Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 In Which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments 1813

  • The term caustic to a tender ear (and I conceive none feel more interested in this inquiry than the anxious guardians of a nursery) may sound harsh and unpleasing, but every solicitude that may arise on this account will no longer exist when it is understood that the pustule, in a state fit to be acted upon, is then quite superficial, and that it does not occupy the space of a silver penny.

    On Vaccination Against Smallpox 2005

  • The term caustic to a tender ear (and I conceive none feel more interested in this inquiry than the anxious guardians of a nursery) may sound harsh and unpleasing, but every solicitude that may arise on this account will no longer exist when it is understood that the pustule, in a state fit to be acted upon, is then quite superficial, and that it does not occupy the space of a silver penny. 25

    On Vaccination Against Smallpox 2005

  • The term caustic to a tender ear (and I conceive none feel more interested in this inquiry than the anxious guardians of a nursery) may sound harsh and unpleasing, but every solicitude that may arise on this account will no longer exist when it is understood that the pustule, in a state fit to be acted upon, is then quite superficial, and that it does not occupy the space of

    The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various

  • The term caustic to a tender ear (and I conceive none feel more interested in this inquiry than the anxious guardians of a nursery) may sound harsh and unpleasing, but every solicitude that may arise on this account will no longer exist when it is understood that the pustule, in a state fit to be acted upon, is then quite superficial, and that it does not occupy the space of a silver penny.

    II. Further Observations on the Variolae Vaccinae, or Cow-Pox. 1799 1909

  • Vitriol is what we call a caustic-a liquid that burns.

    A Breath of Snow and Ashes Gabaldon, Diana 2005

  • When the water receded, their focus was on rebuilding their house, not on what the floodwaters left behind, an 8-inch coating of mud with an orange layer of what they described as caustic sodium.

    theadvertiser.com - 2010

  • KOLONTAR, Hungary - The disaster that buried three Hungarian villages in caustic red sludge last week is deepening the gloom of a country gripped by recession, polarization and the near-ubiquitous feeling that its people are doomed to be victims of calamity.

    Hungarian sludge disaster darkens mood George Jahn 2010

  • KOLONTAR, Hungary - The disaster that buried three Hungarian villages in caustic red sludge last week is deepening the gloom of a country gripped by recession, polarization and the near-ubiquitous feeling that its people are doomed to be victims of calamity.

    Hungarian sludge disaster darkens mood George Jahn 2010

Comments

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  • "The curved surface to which all the rays of a conical pencil of light entering a refractive medium are tangential." --CD&C

    March 16, 2012

  • Harsh and scathingly sarcastic

    July 8, 2014