Noun: alum
| Singular | alum |
| Plural | alums; alumni |
Sample Sentences
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Venice also needed alum for trade, since it was the point of departure for overland transportation of alum to southern Germany and its cloth-manufacturing Free Cities. [1991, Felix Gilbert, The Pope, His Banker, and Venice, page 80:]
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A natural astringent and antiseptic, potassium alum was coveted for its medicinal and cosmetic properties. [2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 201:]
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With weld and cochineal, which are colouring matters the most sensible to the action of sulphate of iron, the purified alums gave us colours more brilliant, fresh, and in a slight degree lighter; while those with our common alums were all duller, and evidently of a deeper hue. [1807, William Nicholson, editor, A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, volume XVIII, page 286:]
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For similar reasons, aluminium sulphate and alums are used in dyeing cloth.[…]Normally alums are soluble in water and insoluble in alcohols. [2000 June, Competition Science Vision, page 486:]
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In structure, the alums consist of simple ions, being not complexes, but double salts. Potash alum or potassium alum is the common alum, with the formula KAl(SO₄)₂·12H₂O) which, for convenience, may be written K₂SO₄·Al₂(SO₄)₃·24H₂O [2005, Amit Arora, Text Book Of Inorganic Chemistry, page 386:]
Nouns inflected like alum
alum,
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *h₂elut-
3. Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥
4. Proto-Italic *-mn̥
5. Latin -men
6. Latin alūmen
7. Anglo-Norman alum, alunbor.
8. Middle English alym, alyme, alum
9. English alum
10. From Middle English alum, alym, alyme, from Anglo-Norman alum, alun, from Latin alūmen. See: Latin Nouns '
alūmen'.