from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A process by which organic substances such as wood, coal, and oil shale are decomposed by heat in the absence of air and distilled to produce useful products such as coke, charcoal, oils, and gases.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The heating of a material, such as coal or wood, in an inert atmosphere, at a high temperature such as to cause decomposition; the principal products include oils and tars from which many useful organic compounds may be obtained; town gas and coke were obtained in this way.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. See Distillation.
- n. the distillation, especially of complex solid substances, so that the ultimate constituents are separated or evolved in new compounds, -- usually requiring a high degree of heat.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. heating a solid substance in a closed container and collecting the volatile products
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