Azote

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈæzəʊt/

Definitions

1. A chemical agent composed primarily of nitrogen that has applications in various scientific fields
2. A term historically used to describe nitrogen or its related compounds within earlier scientific frameworks
3. An inert gas that makes up a large part of Earth's atmosphere and is essential in the chemical sciences

Etymology: Antoine Lavoisier coined "azote" in the 1780s, and the name is a statement of what he had discovered. He saw that the largest part of air, the portion left after oxygen was removed, could not sustain life: animals placed in it suffocated and flames went out. He therefore built the name from Ancient Greek, combining "a-", meaning "without", with "zōē", meaning "life", plus an adjective suffix. The result meant roughly "lifeless," or "that which does not support life." The name reflected a prevailing view of the element rather than its later importance. Nitrogen does sustain life in the sense that living things depend on its compounds, but it is inert as a gas, and Lavoisier's label described only that inertness. Today the element is usually called nitrogen, a name proposed by Jean-Antoine Chaptal in 1790 and drawn from the French "nitre" and the Greek "-gen", meaning "producer of". "Azote" survives in French, and in English it is mainly found in chemistry, especially in the names of certain compounds and in some older texts.

Synonyms: nitrogen