carbolic acid
nounDefinition of carbolic acid
Examples of carbolic acid in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
In 1922, engineers at the Water Department of Cleveland did tests of the city’s drinking water to respond to claims that the water tasted medicinal or like carbolic acid. — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, "The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969," 19 June 2019 The antiseptic Lister ends up using is carbolic acid, which is extracted from coal tar, of all places. — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, "The Gruesome, Bloody World of Victorian Surgery," 22 Oct. 2017 Infection rates plummeted when Lister used carbolic acid to wash hands and scalpels, to dress wounds, and to sterilize sutures. — John J. Ross, WSJ, "Review: ‘The Butchering Art’ Resurrects Joseph Lister," 13 Oct. 2017 Lister found that cleansing the wound with carbolic acid cut the amputation rate to 9%. — John J. Ross, WSJ, "Review: ‘The Butchering Art’ Resurrects Joseph Lister," 13 Oct. 2017 But the saint has also drawn critics who have dismissed him as a self-mutilating hoaxer who exploited people’s credulity and caused his wounds with carbolic acid. — Corey Kilgannon, New York Times, "A Saint’s Remains and the Pope’s Choir at St. Patrick’s Cathedral," 15 Sep. 2017 On the other hand, nine of those 10 odorants for which dogs are clearly more sensitive than humans are carbolic acids. — Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian, "In Some Ways, Your Sense of Smell Is Actually Better Than a Dog’s," 22 May 2017These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'carbolic acid.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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