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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
caustic
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
soda
▪ Then the wind got up, and coated everything with an invasive layer of caustic soda.
▪ It was rather like having a heated dagger thrust into the eyeball and twisted, then caustic soda rubbed in the wound.
▪ Anhydrous caustic soda, hydrogen gas and phosgene, all well established product areas, are being developed to produce maximum returns.
▪ Store in polythene bottles as 5 M caustic soda etches glass.
▪ In its concentrated form it is hazardous to handle especially as many commercial formulations are stabilised with caustic soda.
▪ He claimed Bourne, 26, threw caustic soda liquid into her face causing temporary blindness and serious burns.
▪ Many of these are based on caustic soda and require care in use and protective clothing, gloves and goggles.
▪ In 1890 Castner devised a new process for its manufacture, based on the electrolytic decomposition of caustic soda.
wit
▪ Sir Brian is loud-mouthing Sir Bernard, who is assaulting the other five with caustic wit.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Hayward made some pretty caustic comments about your poetry.
▪ Some of his students were alienated by his caustic wit.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But the caustic critics were not the majority.
▪ Eliot wrote a caustic letter back.
▪ Heavy fatty deposits can be broken up by the use of caustic cleaners sometimes specially formulated and described as drain cleaners.
▪ It was rather like having a heated dagger thrust into the eyeball and twisted, then caustic soda rubbed in the wound.
▪ Likewise, efficient marketing of both chlorine and caustic soda is essential as demand for the two chemicals is rarely in balance.
▪ Rather than return home to be arrested, Kim kept up his caustic criticism from abroad.
▪ The open and caustic disagreements between Deming and Juran are but one case in point.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Caustic

Caustic \Caus"tic\, Caustical \Caus"tic*al\, a. [L. caustucs, Ge. ?, fr. ? to burn. Cf. Calm, Ink.]

  1. Capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance by chemical action; burning; corrosive; searing.

  2. Severe; satirical; sharp; as, a caustic remark.

    Caustic curve (Optics), a curve to which the ray of light, reflected or refracted by another curve, are tangents, the reflecting or refracting curve and the luminous point being in one plane.

    Caustic lime. See under Lime.

    Caustic potash, Caustic soda (Chem.), the solid hydroxides potash, KOH, and soda, NaOH, or solutions of the same.

    Caustic silver, nitrate of silver, lunar caustic.

    Caustic surface (Optics), a surface to which rays reflected or refracted by another surface are tangents. Caustic curves and surfaces are called catacaustic when formed by reflection, and diacaustic when formed by refraction.

    Syn: Stinging; cutting; pungent; searching.

Caustic

Caustic \Cau"stic\, n. [L. causticum (sc. medicamentum). See Caustic, a.]

  1. Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.

  2. (Optics) A caustic curve or caustic surface.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
caustic

c.1400, "burning, corrosive," from Latin causticus "burning, caustic," from Greek kaustikos "capable of burning; corrosive," from kaustos "combustible; burnt," verbal adjective from kaiein, the Greek word for "to burn" (transitive and intransitive) in all periods, which is of uncertain origin with no certain cognates outside Greek. Figurative sense of "sarcastic" is attested from 1771. As a noun, early 15c., from the adjective.

Wiktionary
caustic

a. 1 Capable of burning, corroding or destroying organic tissue. 2 (context of language etc. English) sharp, bitter, cutting, biting, and sarcastic in a scathing way. n. 1 Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic. 2 (context optics computer graphics English) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object. 3 (context mathematics English) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays for a given curve. 4 (context informal chemistry English) caustic soda

WordNet
caustic
  1. adj. harsh or corrosive in tone; "an acerbic tone piercing otherwise flowery prose"; "a barrage of acid comments"; "her acrid remarks make her many enemies"; "bitter words"; "blistering criticism"; "caustic jokes about political assassination, talk-show hosts and medical ethics"; "a sulfurous denunciation" [syn: acerb, acerbic, acid, acrid, bitter, blistering, sulfurous, sulphurous, venomous, virulent, vitriolic]

  2. of a substance, especially a strong acid; capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action [syn: corrosive, erosive, vitriolic]

caustic

n. any chemical substance that burns or destroys living tissue

Wikipedia
Caustic

Caustic commonly refers to:

  • Causticity, a property of various corrosive substances
    • Sodium hydroxide, sometimes called caustic soda
    • Potassium hydroxide, sometimes called caustic potash
    • Calcium oxide, sometimes called caustic lime

Caustic may also refer to:

  • Caustic (optics), the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface
  • Caustic (mathematics), the envelope of rays reflected or refracted by a manifold, in differential geometry
  • Caustic (band), an American industrial/powernoise band
  • Caustic (software), an Android sequencer
  • Caustic Window, an alias of Aphex Twin (electronic musician Richard D. James)
  • Caustic Graphics, Inc., developer of hardware/software real-time ray-tracing graphics technology, since 2010 part of Imagination Technologies Group plc.
Caustic (mathematics)

In differential geometry and geometric optics, a caustic is the envelope of rays either reflected or refracted by a manifold. It is related to the concept of caustics in optics. The ray's source may be a point (called the radiant) or parallel rays from a point at infinity, in which case a direction vector of the rays must be specified.

More generally, especially as applied to symplectic geometry and singularity theory, a caustic is the critical value set of a Lagrangian mapping where is a Lagrangian immersion of a Lagrangian submanifold L into a symplectic manifold M, and is a Lagrangian fibration of the symplectic manifold M. The caustic is a subset of the Lagrangian fibration's base space B.

Caustic (optics)

In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Therefore, in the image to the right, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges. These shapes often have cusp singularities.

Caustic (band)

Caustic is an American industrial band based out of Madison, WI, created in 2002 by DJ Matt Fanale (AKA Eurotic), who is the sole consistent member. The band's live lineup varies quite a bit, largely depending on the location of the show. Caustic's lyrics are typically humorous, while the music itself ranges between older styled industrial and more modern styled powernoise.

Caustic has performed live at a number of international industrial music festivals, including the 2005 and 2006 Providence Industrial Festival and the 2006 Blacksun, Reverence, Indoctrination, and the UK's Infest Festival in 2007.

Usage examples of "caustic".

With Aesculus the tips were quite indifferent to bodies attached to them, though sensitive to caustic.

Petrone believes it was due to a chromogenic micrococcus, and relieved the patient by the use of a five per cent solution of caustic potash.

Manner in which radicles bend when they encounter an obstacle in the soil--Vicia faba, tips of radicles highly sensitive to contact and other irritants--Effects of too high a temperature--Power of discriminating between objects attached on opposite sides--Tips of secondary radicles sensitive--Pisum, tips of radicles sensitive--Effects of such sensitiveness in overcoming geotropism--Secondary radicles--Phaseolus, tips of radicles hardly sensitive to contact, but highly sensitive to caustic and to the removal of a slice--Tropaeolum--Gossypium--Cucurbita--Raphanus--Aesculus, tip not sensitive to slight contact, highly sensitive to caustic--Quercus, tip highly sensitive to contact--Power of discrimination--Zea, tip highly sensitive, secondary radicles--Sensitiveness of radicles to moist air--Summary of chapter.

Household Pests, Hugo Hartnack complained in the 1930s about a chemical used for bedbugs that was so caustic it took the finish off metal beds.

Quassia or Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he jogged round the village.

These comprise soda ash, soda crystals, caustic soda, silicate of soda, potash, caustic potash, soaps of various kinds, stale urine, ammoniacal compounds.

They drag-crawled and with their wavering spanworm walk stomped toward the train and even touched it and gnawed at it, marked it with stone-hard teeth and caustic spit.

Given the nature of modern teenaged society, Crystal was not surprised that she had jumped at the chance to be included among an elite, chosen few or that she wanted revenge on the brutally caustic Harmony Kendall.

Yun Yun could prove her thorns were sharp, and often did, with caustic comments that stung worse than any pricked finger.

After one day slight deflection, but the cauterised mark was so faint that the same side was again touched with caustic.

When the caustic was applied to the three cauterised specimens, it was held quite motionless during 5 seconds, and the result was that the black marks were extremely minute.

These two layers are sometimes well seen when a gland has been crushed or boiled in caustic potash.

Most respectfully addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic, M.

The intensity of her interest in Slayer mythos compiled by Watchers was intriguing, but since comment usually triggered a tirade of caustic sarcasm, Xander had dropped the subject.

They call it pour-and-run because even in the open air only a full-body antiexposure suit and an industrialstrength ventilator or positive-flow breathing system will save anyone within fifty yards from being asphyxiated by the sulfur dioxide fumes or severely burned by caustic acid.