Carbonite

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An explosive manufactured from a variety of materials, including nitroglycerine, wood meal and nitrates. countable, uncountable

    "He was pleased with bellite, he found that carbonite made more fumes than bellite, but the explosive he liked best was ammonite."

  2. 2
    An explosive composed of nitrobenzene, saltpetre, sulfur, and kieselguhr. countable, uncountable
  3. 3
    A naturally occurring carbonaceous material formed from coal, natural coke. countable, uncountable

    "In some Scottish localities, in the neighbourhood of trap dykes, coal is found to have been changed to coke ("carbonite"). Similar effects have been noticed (1882) in Midlothian, Chesterfield Co., Va., where the carbonite seam is 15 feet thick."

Example

More examples

"Between 3 billion and 4 billion years ago, a river there flowed into a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe, depositing sediments packed with carbonite minerals and clay."

Etymology

From carbon + -ite.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.