ALKALI • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Alkali

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/ˈælkəlˌaɪ/ Listen

noun

Alkali n. (pl. alkalis or alkalies)

Soda ash; caustic soda, caustic potash, etc.

(Chem.) One of a class of caustic bases, such as soda, potash, ammonia, and lithia, whose distinguishing peculiarities are solubility in alcohol and water, uniting with oils and fats to form soap, neutralizing and forming salts with acids, turning to brown several vegetable yellows, and changing reddened litmus to blue.

Soluble mineral matter, other than common salt, contained in soils of natural waters. (Western U. S.)

Fixed alkalies, potash and soda.

Vegetable alkalies. Same as Alkaloids.

Volatile alkali, ammonia, so called in distinction from the fixed alkalies.

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Etymology of 'Alkali'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Alkali" Quotes from Famous Books

... been a spring once, but now it was a mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is necessary to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on sheep water—the water holes being tainted by sheep—and alkali water and soapy water of the desert, but never happily. How I hailed the clear, ...

— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields ...

— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... head the coulee was merely a slight depression. Farther on it broadened and deepened. Down the middle of its length ran a sinuous grove of cottonwoods. On either side its flanks were bare, white with clay and alkali, rising to steep banks of yellow earth, bald and bleached in ...

— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... first three days after marriage, the girl and her husband should sleep on the floor, abstain from sexual pleasures, and eat their food without seasoning it either with alkali or salt. For the next seven days they should bathe amidst the sounds of auspicious musical instruments, should decorate themselves, dine together, and pay attention to their relations as well as to those who may have come to witness their marriage. This is applicable to persons ...

— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... till at length the heap has become charged with a strong flux; and then one powerful fire more, fanned to a white heat by a keen, dry breeze, reduces the whole into a semi-fluid mass. The same effects have been produced on the materials of the rampart by the beacon-fires and the alkali, that were produced, according to Pliny, by the fires and the soda of the Phoenician merchants storm-bound on the sands of the river Belus. But the state of civilization in Scotland at the time is not such as to permit of the discovery being followed up by similar results. ...

— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

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