Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In chem., a slow combustion or oxidation; the act of gradual combination of the combustible elements of a body with the oxygen of the air, as in the slow decay of wood, in the formation of acetic acid from alcohol, or of niter by the decomposition of animal matter, and in numerous other processes: a term introduced by Liebig.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A gradual oxidation from exposure to air and moisture, as in the decay of old trees or of dead animals.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
gradual oxidation fromexposure toair andmoisture , as in thedecay of oldtrees or deadanimals .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In 2006, Samir lost in the seventh round because of just such a word, "eremacausis" ( "gradual oxidation of organic matter from exposure to air and moisture").
Informed Reader 2007
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If you ever learnt to love her, it would not be for any lovelight in her eye; it would never be the quick, fierce, hot, biting electric passion of the fleshly poets, it would be what a chemist might call the "eremacausis" kindled by habit.
Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series George Robert Aberigh-Mackay 1864
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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The word is eremacausis.
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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The word is eremacausis.
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We need not here discuss the mooted question between chemists, whether fermentation and decay result from slow combustion (eremacausis) or from the presence of living organisms (bacteria, etc.); but having in the preceding pages detailed the results of the application of various antiseptics, we may now indicate under what circumstances they can economically be applied.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 Various
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Animal matter enters into combination with oxygen in precisely the same way as vegetable matter, but as, in addition to carbon and hydrogen, it contains nitrogen, the products of the eremacausis are more numerous, being carbon and nitrate of ammonia, carburetted and sulphuretted hydrogen, and water, and these ammoniacal salts greatly favor the growth of fungi.
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Then, if I escape that, there is a 'Charybdis' on the other side in the shape of an Evangelical party, and I so seldom get invited to those that I am half-inclined to go if it were not for the bore - my 'eremacausis' is very low just now.
Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle 1892
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"The action which takes place when moist vegetable substances are exposed to oxygen is that of slow combustion (` eremacausis '), the oxygen uniting with the wood and liberating a volume of carbonic acid equal to itself, and another portion combining with the hydrogen of the wood to form water.
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There are vegetables at all times undergoing decay, or eremacausis,] a slow combustion, during which the compound atoms are undergoing a change, and each one of which
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