phlogistiann.

1789 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 79 331 Sulphur not that simple substance which the anti-phlogistians suppose it to be.]

1799 H. Davy in T. Beddoes Contrib. Physical & Med. Knowl. 67 The phlogistians were obliged to consider all combustible bodies as combinations of different..substances, with the undemonstrated phlogiston.

1832 Abstr. Papers Royal Soc. 1800–14 1 475 A third is, according to the tenets of the phlogistians, that fluoric acid, like metallic oxides, is liable to combine with hydrogen, and form an inflammable compound.

1859 D. A. Wells Wells's Princ. & Applic. Chem. (ed. 5) vii. 309 According to the phlogistians, it was no sooner liberated from a combustible, than it passed into combination with the surrounding atmosphere.

1912 Science 26 Jan. 123/1 The inveterate phlogistian..saw in simple, almost modern modes of thought..only the sheerest nonsense.

1955 Isis 46 392 The new doctrine rapidly gained ground during the last years of the eighteenth century, the number of phlogistians dwindling, that of the antiphlogistians increasing correspondingly.

2001 Canad. Jrnl. Hist. 36 457 Where the phlogistians saw the release of phlogiston (the principle of inflammability) from the combustible, Lavoisier saw the absorption of oxygen by the combustible.