Pitchblende

noun

noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Naturally-occurring uranium oxide, a variety of the mineral uraninite. countable, uncountable

    "Working in Paris in 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie processed thousands of pounds of pitchblende from the same glass-factory tailings in order to isolate two radioactive elements that had hitherto been unknown: radium and polonium."

  2. 2
    a mineral consisting of uranium oxide and trace amounts of radium and thorium and polonium and lead and helium; uraninite in massive form is called pitchblende which is the chief uranium ore wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
uraniniteuraninite

Example

More examples

"Working in Paris in 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie processed thousands of pounds of pitchblende from the same glass-factory tailings in order to isolate two radioactive elements that had hitherto been unknown: radium and polonium."

Etymology

From German Pechblende, from Pech (“pitch”) + Blende (“blende”).

Related phrases

uranium oxide

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