caustic
/ˈkɔːstɪk
/ /ˈkɒstɪk/adjective
1Able to burn or corrode organic tissue by chemical action: a caustic cleaner...
- The list includes sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide, caustic chemicals that will rip the skin off your fingers and the lining from the throat.
- Sodium hydroxide is a caustic type of chemical that actually softens hair fibers.
- Some of the chemicals - including caustic hydrogen fluoride and deadly arsine gas - are toxic, and the fossil fuel consumed contributes to global warming, says Williams.
Synonyms
corrosive, corroding, mordant, acid, alkaline, burning, stinging, acrid, harsh, destructive
2Sarcastic in a scathing and bitter way: the players were making caustic comments about the refereeing...
- Her caustic, waspish comments on the other housemates were biting and bitchy, but always spot on.
- She's really quite funny, in a bitter, caustic kind of way.
- The pattern of caustic complaints and sarcastic responses slowly gave way to a new pattern of care toward one another.
Synonyms
sarcastic, cutting, biting, mordant, stinging, sharp, bitter, scathing, derisive, sardonic, ironic, scornful, trenchant, acerbic, vitriolic, tart, acid, pungent, acrimonious, astringent, rapier-like, razor-edged, critical, polemic, virulent, venomous, waspish
British informal sarky
rare mordacious, acidulous
3 Physics Formed by the intersection of reflected or refracted parallel rays from a curved surface.In On burning mirrors Diocles also studies the problem of finding a mirror such that the envelope of reflected rays is a given caustic curve or of finding a mirror such that the focus traces a given curve as the Sun moves across the sky....
- Sturm's theoretical work in mathematical physics involved the study of caustic curves, and poles and polars of conic sections.
- For example they worked together on caustic curves during 1692-93 although they did not publish the work jointly.
noun
1A caustic substance.Spent grain, yeast, ethanol, and acids and caustics used for cleaning are all sent out to be used for feed for cattle or reprocessed and reused industrially....
- Production is potentially dangerous, as you need to heat volatile methanol with caustics.
- The scenes below show caustics, which are very difficult to render.
2 Physics A caustic surface or curve.Nevertheless, this elucidation of the generic discontinuous change has shed light upon many optical phenomena where caustics and diffraction occur....
- The caustic of a circle with radiant point on the circumference is a cardioid, while if the rays are parallel then the caustic is a nephroid.
- The caustic of the equiangular spiral, where the pole is taken as the radiant, is an equal equiangular spiral.
Derivatives
caustically
/ adverb ...- Unfortunately, however, they have now become a version of the mid-1960s caucus which a reformist Whitlam so caustically described at the time: small and witless men.
- It is strangely unclassifiable television - a caustically comic, surreptitiously sudsy thriller that has alienated a whole tranche of strait-laced Americans and so delighted many more.
- Maybe it is in his corner, but as one Indonesian newspaper commented caustically, ‘No doubt the police feel safe, because they have guns.’
causticity
/ /kɒsˈtɪsɪti / noun ...- ‘A Dirty Shame’ finds Waters basking in the wildness of such fun, but the film is also a retreat from his more sophisticated causticity.
- ‘The saliva of termites has great causticity, although it is not strong enough to destroy concrete buildings,’ said Cheng Ruihua, a termite exterminator in Yangpu District for over 30 years.
- One is tempted, with undue causticity perhaps, to ask - like Emperor Joseph II at the premiere of Mozart's ‘Abduction from the Seraglio ‘- whether her prose does not, in fact, have ‘too many notes.’
Origin
Late Middle English: via Latin from Greek kaustikos, from kaustos 'combustible', from kaiein 'to burn'.
English caustic came via Latin from Greek kaustikos, from kaiein ‘to burn’, also the base of cauterize (Late Middle English).