Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Black lead   /blæk lɛd/   Listen
noun
Black lead  n.  Plumbago; graphite. It leaves a blackish mark somewhat like lead. See Graphite.


Lead  n.  
1.
(Chem.) One of the elements, a heavy, pliable, inelastic metal, having a bright, bluish color, but easily tarnished. It is both malleable and ductile, though with little tenacity, and is used for tubes, sheets, bullets, etc. Its specific gravity is 11.37. It is easily fusible (melting point 327.5° C), forms alloys with other metals, and is an ingredient of solder and type metal. Atomic number 82. Atomic weight, 207.2. Symbol Pb (L. Plumbum). It is chiefly obtained from the mineral galena, lead sulphide.
2.
An article made of lead or an alloy of lead; as:
(a)
A plummet or mass of lead, used in sounding at sea.
(b)
(Print.) A thin strip of type metal, used to separate lines of type in printing.
(c)
Sheets or plates of lead used as a covering for roofs; hence, pl., a roof covered with lead sheets or terne plates. "I would have the tower two stories, and goodly leads upon the top."
3.
A small cylinder of black lead or graphite, used in pencils.
Black lead, graphite or plumbago; so called from its leadlike appearance and streak. (Colloq.)
Coasting lead, a sounding lead intermediate in weight between a hand lead and deep-sea lead.
Deep-sea lead, the heaviest of sounding leads, used in water exceeding a hundred fathoms in depth.
Hand lead, a small lead use for sounding in shallow water.
Krems lead, Kremnitz lead, a pure variety of white lead, formed into tablets, and called also Krems white, or Kremnitz white, and Vienna white.
Lead arming, tallow put in the hollow of a sounding lead. See To arm the lead (below).
Lead colic. See under Colic.
Lead color, a deep bluish gray color, like tarnished lead.
Lead glance. (Min.) Same as Galena.
Lead line
(a)
(Med.) A dark line along the gums produced by a deposit of metallic lead, due to lead poisoning.
(b)
(Naut.) A sounding line.
Lead mill, a leaden polishing wheel, used by lapidaries.
Lead ocher (Min.), a massive sulphur-yellow oxide of lead. Same as Massicot.
Lead pencil, a pencil of which the marking material is graphite (black lead).
Lead plant (Bot.), a low leguminous plant, genus Amorpha (Amorpha canescens), found in the Northwestern United States, where its presence is supposed to indicate lead ore.
Lead tree.
(a)
(Bot.) A West Indian name for the tropical, leguminous tree, Leucaena glauca; probably so called from the glaucous color of the foliage.
(b)
(Chem.) Lead crystallized in arborescent forms from a solution of some lead salt, as by suspending a strip of zinc in lead acetate.
Mock lead, a miner's term for blende.
Red lead, a scarlet, crystalline, granular powder, consisting of minium when pure, but commonly containing several of the oxides of lead. It is used as a paint or cement and also as an ingredient of flint glass.
Red lead ore (Min.), crocoite.
Sugar of lead, acetate of lead.
To arm the lead, to fill the hollow in the bottom of a sounding lead with tallow in order to discover the nature of the bottom by the substances adhering.
To cast the lead, or To heave the lead, to cast the sounding lead for ascertaining the depth of water.
White lead, hydrated carbonate of lead, obtained as a white, amorphous powder, and much used as an ingredient of white paint.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Black lead" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the London Chemical News (1861) a paper on the employment of carbon as a means of permanent record. The imperishable nature of carbon, in its various forms of lamp-black, ivory-black, wood-charcoal, and graphite or black lead, holds out much greater promise of being usefully employed in the manufacture of a permanent writing material; since, for this substance, in its elementary condition and at ordinary temperatures, there exists ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... very difficult to detach. The gneiss near the Cross of La Guayra, half a league from Caracas, presented also vestiges of azure copper-ore* (* Blue carbonate of copper.) disseminated in veins of quartz, and small strata of plumbago (black lead), or earthy carburetted iron. This last is found in pretty large masses, and sometimes mingled with sparry iron-ore, in the ravine of Tocume, to the west ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... genuine signature holding the paper on which the forgery is to be produced; tracing the outline of the signature by means of a pencil, and then with ink to write over the pencil copy. But as the method necessitates the use of an india rubber to remove the surplus black lead where not covered by the ink, evidences of the use of the rubber will be found to occur, and traces of the black lead can be found by the microscope. While the appearances and conditions are common to traced signatures, there are in addition to their presence generally found ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... arming. Bronzed men, savagely joyful, poured from under roofs of thatch, strapping on great black lead-weighted belts. In the corrals others lassoed horses. It looked like a sudden changing from peaceful highland domesticity, as the clans of Scotland or the cantons of Helvetia might gather. But these men were not rising to defend ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... in Surbiton yesterday," said the frivolous voice, "and an errand-boy had done his worst with it with a very black lead pencil." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... were then at liberty to view him in the distance, in midstream, lying on his back in the bottom of the boat; and it was almost more than we could stand. The only way to bring him back was to bribe the boy into saying that he wanted to go across to the village for bacon or black lead or sardines. Thus even the boy had ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... lead. Also in gold quarries with matter of gold are small stones found, and are gathered with the gold, and blown by themselves, and turn all to lead, and therefore gold is as heavy as lead. But of black lead is double kind. For black lead cometh alone of a vein, or is gendered of silver in medlied veins, and is blown, and in blowing first cometh tin, and then silver, and then what leaveth is blown and turneth into black lead. Aristotle saith that of brimstone that ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... table, an impression of it is taken in a composition resembling wax which is spread upon a metal slab to the thickness of about one-twelfth of an inch. Both the surface of the type and of the wax are thoroughly coated with plumbago or black lead, which serves as a lubricant to prevent the wax from adhering ...
— The Building of a Book • Various


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com