Nitrite

//ˈnaɪ.tɹaɪt// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any salt or ester of nitrous acid. countable, uncountable

    "John Birdsall, a scientist for the American Meat Institute, said that there were no industry qualms about trying to lower the nitrite amounts even farther. For centuries, some form of nitrites have been used to cure and to preserve bacon and to give it a pink color."

  2. 2
    the radical -NO2 or any compound containing it (such as a salt or ester of nitrous acid) wordnet
  3. 3
    The univalent radical -NO₂, and the anion NO₂⁻ countable, uncountable

Example

More examples

"Is there a nitrite substitute for food?"

Related phrases

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