Definition of "ethylene" []

• A colorless flammable gas, C2H4, derived from natural gas and petroleum and used as a source of many organic compounds, in welding and cutting metals, to color citrus fruits, and as an anesthetic. Also called ethene. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "According to Pemex, this will reduce imports by enabling the domestic manufacture of certain ethylene derivatives that are currently only available from overseas producers."
• "When a stream of ethylene is directed on to nickel, cobalt or iron, which has been freshly reduced and kept in the region of 300°C, intense incandescence of the metal with deposition of large quantites of carbon due to breakdown of the ethylene occurs."
• "Dad must've been a tad behind the times, though, since I just found out that antifreeze was first prepared, and called ethylene glycol, in 1859 the family Buick wasn't quite that old by a French chemist named Charles Adolphe Wurtz."