white lead
Meanings
noun
- Tin, golden marcasite.
- A basic lead carbonate, particularly (historical) as once widely used for white paint, whitening cosmetics, and early medicine.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
In the tin sense, a calque of Latin plumbum album (literally “white lead”), a term already in use before our era, for tin and lead were not yet properly distinguished prior to modern times. Compare Latin plumbum candidum (literally “shining-white lead”) and Arabic رَصَاص أَبْيَض (raṣāṣ ʔabyaḍ, “white lead”), both of which were also used to mean “tin” and to distinguish it from lead proper, called “black lead” (plumbum nigrum; رَصَاص أَسْوَد (raṣāṣ ʔaswad)) in those ancient tongues.
Synonyms
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.