zinc

1. 1.

   a bluish-white lustrous metallic element; brittle at ordinary temperatures but malleable when heated; used in a wide variety of alloys and in galvanizing iron; it occurs naturally as zinc sulphide in zinc blende

   SynonymsZnatomic number 30

   Broadermetallic element

   Narrowerspelter

1. 1.

   coat or cover with zinc

   Broadercoat

Other forms of zinc

plural

zincs·

past tense

zinced·

present participle

zincing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about zinc

What does zinc mean?

zinc means "a bluish-white lustrous metallic element; brittle at ordinary temperatures but malleable when heated; used in a wide variety of alloys and in galvanizing iron; it occurs naturally as zinc sulphide in zinc blende". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in zinc?

zinc has 1 syllable: zinc. In IPA it is /ˈzɪŋk/.

What is another word for zinc?

Close synonyms include Zn, atomic number 30. 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 zinc a common word?

zinc is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.