black lead

1. 1.

   used as a lubricant and as a moderator in nuclear reactors

   Synonymsgraphiteplumbago

   Broadercarbon

   Narrowerleadpencil

Questions about black lead

What does black lead mean?

black lead means "used as a lubricant and as a moderator in nuclear reactors".

What is another word for black lead?

Close synonyms include graphite, plumbago. 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 black lead a common word?

black lead 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.