aqua regia

1. 1.

   a yellow fuming corrosive mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid that dissolves metals (including gold)

   Synonymsnitrohydrochloric acid

   Broaderacid

Questions about aqua regia

What does aqua regia mean?

aqua regia means "a yellow fuming corrosive mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid that dissolves metals (including gold)".

What is another word for aqua regia?

Close synonyms include nitrohydrochloric acid. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is aqua regia a common word?

aqua regia is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.