Meaning of oxygen in English
Table of contents
Noun
oxygenEtymology
late 18th century: from French (principe) oxygène‘acidifying constituent’ (because at first it was held to be the essential component in the formation of acids)Definitions
1. a nonmetallic bivalent element that is normally a colorless odorless tasteless nonflammable diatomic gasExamples
- « constitutes 21 percent of the atmosphere by volume »
- « the most abundant element in the earth's crust »
Derived terms
Famous quotes
- « Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. » Margaret Thatcher
- « Freedom is the oxygen of the soul. » Moshe Dayan
- « On my job I end up jumping out of planes. Last week I got in an 18-wheeler and drove down a runway onto a skid track. The week before that they put me in a car and sunk me to the bottom of a lake to see if I could escape without an oxygen tank. » Rick Mercer
- « I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. » Tom Stoppard
- « We found out the Gemini spacesuit was, well, oxygen was flowing to keep me cool as well as to breathe, and it wasn't good enough. My visor got fogged. » Gene Cernan