Cyanide

Definitions

1. Any compound containing the -C≡N group or the CN⁻ anion.
   countable
2. Sodium or potassium cyanide, used in the extraction of gold and silver or as a poison.
   countable, uncountable
3. Hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide gas, a poisonous gas.
   uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“The birdies all try⟳ an' hide⟳ / But they still go for peanuts / When coated with cyanide”

“Two doctors and a metallurgist from Scotland patented a process⟳ for dissolving gold with cyanide in 1887 and patented the recovery of gold from solution using finely divided zinc (zinc precipitation) the following year. […] The first commercial processing plant⟳ to use⟳ cyanide in the milling circuit was constructed at the Crown mine at Karangahake, New Zealand in 1889.”

“The vast majority of the victims, on Jones’s orders, had drunk a fruit punch mixture laced with cyanide, a deadly poison. Adults had fed the poisoned liquid to the children, including infants.”

CEFR level