Definition of "anhydride" []

• A chemical compound formed from another, often an acid, by the removal of water. (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.

• "I saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide of manganese, with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen -- a foolish thing, for additional oxygen could not alter the quantity of breathed carbonic anhydride, which is a direct narcotic poison."
• "~ To understand the reaction which occurs, it must be remembered that a volatile acid anhydride is expelled from its salts when heated with an anhydride which is not volatile."
• "My most ambitious attempt was a multistep sequence aimed at synthesizing aspirin, for which I needed acetic anhydride, which had to be made from acetyl chloride, for which I needed phosphorus trichloride, for which I needed to burn red phosphorus in a stream of chlorine gas."