Crossword clues for creosote
creosote
- Used as a preservative for wood
- A dark oily liquid obtained by distillation of coal tar
- A colorless or yellowish oily liquid obtained by distillation of wood tar
- Used as an antiseptic
- Oily liquid preservative - eco-store
- Oily liquid ruining eco-store
- Oil broken-down scooter with last of lube
- Wood preservative
- Wood preserver made from coal tar
- Scooter treated with European wood preservative
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Creosote \Cre"o*sote\ (kr[=e]"[-o]*s[=o]t), n. [Gr. kre`as, gen. kre`ws, flesh + sw`zein to preserve.] (Chem.) Wood-tar oil; an oily antiseptic liquid, of a burning smoky taste, colorless when pure, but usually colored yellow or brown by impurity or exposure. It is a complex mixture of various phenols and their ethers, and is obtained by the distillation of wood tar, especially that of beechwood.
Note: It is remarkable as an antiseptic and deodorizer in the preservation of wood, flesh, etc., and in the prevention of putrefaction; but it is a poor germicide, and in this respect has been overrated. Smoked meat, as ham, owes its preservation and taste to a small quantity of creosote absorbed from the smoke to which it is exposed. Carbolic acid is phenol[1] proper, while creosote is a mixture of several phenols.
Coal-tar creosote (Chem.), a colorless or yellow, oily liquid, obtained in the distillation of coal tar, and resembling wood-tar oil, or creosote proper, in composition and properties.
Creosote \Cre"o*sote\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Creosoted (-s?"t?d); p. pr. & vb. n. Creosoting.] To saturate or impregnate with creosote, as timber, for the prevention of decay.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1835, from German Kreosot, coined 1832 by its discoverer, German-born natural philosopher Carl Ludwig, Baron Reichenbach (1788-1869), from Greek kreo-, comb. form of kreas "flesh" (see raw) + soter "preserver," from soizein "save, preserve." So called because it was used as an antiseptic.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A pale yellow oily liquid, containing phenols and similar compounds, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood tar, once used medicinally. 2 A similar brown liquid obtained from coal tar used as a wood preservative. 3 (context uncountable English) The creosote bush. vb. To apply creosote.
WordNet
n. a colorless or yellowish oily liquid obtained by distillation of wood tar; used as an antiseptic
a dark oily liquid obtained by distillation of coal tar; used as a preservative for wood [syn: coal-tar creosote]
v. treat with creosote; "creosoted wood"
Wikipedia
Creosotes are a category of carbonaceous chemicals formed by the distillation of various tars, and by pyrolysis of plant-derived material, such as wood or fossil fuel. They are typically used as preservatives or antiseptics. Some creosote types were used historically as a treatment for components of seagoing and outdoor wood structures to prevent rot (e.g., bridgework and railroad ties, see image). Samples may be commonly found inside chimney flues, where the coal or wood burns under variable conditions, producing soot and tarry smoke. Creosotes are the principal chemicals responsible for the stability, scent, and flavor characteristic of smoked meat; the name is derived .
The two main kinds recognized in industry are coal-tar creosote and wood-tar creosote. The coal-tar variety, having stronger and more toxic properties, has chiefly been used as a preservative for wood; coal-tar creosote was also formerly used as an escharotic, to burn malignant skin tissue, and in dentistry, to prevent necrosis, before its carcinogenic properties became known. The wood-tar variety has been used for meat preservation, ship treatment, and such medical purposes as an anaesthetic, antiseptic, astringent, expectorant, and laxative, though these have mostly been replaced by modern medicines.
Varieties of creosote have also been made from both oil shale and petroleum, and are known as oil-tar creosote when derived from oil tar, and as water-gas-tar creosote when derived from the tar of water gas. Creosote also has been made from pre-coal formations such as lignite, yielding lignite-tar creosote, and peat, yielding peat-tar creosote.
Creosote is a variety of products which are mixtures of many chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phenol, cresols etc.
Creosote may also refer to:
Usage examples of "creosote".
Her skin was the color of lumber, say pine or spruce, washed with a tincture of creosote and slightly aged out of doors: browner than white and lighter than, say, beans of coffee in their burlap sacks.
Wherever the cactus roots or flash-flood washes left room, you saw thin chaparral, or stickerbush, from creosote and catclaw to eight- or ten-foot whitebark and paloverde.
Phillip had the nastier job of soaking the inside of the centerboard case with creosote.
Here shafts of the sun seldom penetrated the canopy of leaves, except in fields such as the patch old Zacharias had cleared amongst the sedge of the marsh on the fringe of the forest His small hut, roughly constructed of tambuki grass and creosoted African wattle poles, huddled inside the hedge of branches surrounding the clearing, under a spreading strangler fig and a red milkwood tree that had grown old and gnarled together.
The shimmering asphalt coasted over a parched and repetitious plateau, spotted with stunted sagebrush and saltweed and creosote bush.
I could make out a number of features: clusters of tumbleweeds, like giant beach balls, creosote bushes, bayonet cactuses, yuccas, and the leggy branches of the palo verde trees.
Cactus, mesquite, and creosote bushes grew at neatly spaced intervals, as though planted by an arborist.
As I turned onto the Antelope Valley Highway, the way posts of prefab civilisation - Colonial Kitchens, Carrows, Dennys, Pizza Huts - disappeared, and expanses of increasingly raw terrain slid into view: low sandstone hills parched white under a stubble of creosote and sagebrush, squat and pitiful against the distant black backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains.
They hunted lizards and snakes and coneys, collected the juicy young pads of prickly pear and dug for tuberous roots in the dry tableland above the cliffs, picked samphire and watercress in the marshes by the margin of the river and waded out into the river's shallows and cast circular nets to catch fish, which they smoked on racks above fires built of creosote bush and pine chips.
Each of its lodgepole-pine timbers had been well picked and creosoted, adzed only slightly on top to form a washboard passage between the dark steep-roofed tunnel.
A line of creosoted wooden piles from an old dock served to tie up the barges.
The view was depressing - the brown creosoted back of a hut, a grey waste of sky and the rain driving.
William lost control and needed support, he leaned against the creosoted fence dividing their house from its neighbour.
They were retreats from the city and the city's formality, little more than unornamented shacks with deep shaded porches and weathered clapboard siding perched on creosoted timbers to raise them above the blistering summer sands.
The gates came up and they moved again and now they were in the lee of the norther and the wooden-hulled ships of the pitiful and grotesque wartime merchant marine lay against the creosoted pilings of the wooden docks and the scum of the harbor lay along their sides blacker than the creosote of the pilings and foul as an uncleaned sewer.