Skip to content
OneKitly

chlorine

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈklɔːɹiːn//
  • United States//ˈklɔɹin//

A toxic, green, gaseous chemical element (symbol Cl) with an atomic number of 17.

noun

  1. 1

    A toxic, green, gaseous chemical element (symbol Cl) with an atomic number of 17.

    When TCCA touches a small amount of water and doesn’t dissolve, “it can experience a chemical reaction, generating heat and causing the decomposition of the chemical, which in turn produces toxic chlorine gas and can produce explosive nitrogen trichloride,” a 2023 report by the CSB said.

  2. 2

    A single atom of this element.

  3. 3

    A chlorine-based bleach or disinfectant.

    The mechanism involved in the explosive reaction between swimming pool chlorine (calcium hypochlorite) and brake fluid (polyethylene glycol), a possible improvised explosive mixture, has been studied by means of the gaseous products produced.

    Chlorines are useful for disinfecting water and for housekeeping disinfectants.

    Of the chemical solutions, chlorine tablets will kill many pathogens, but not some parasites like giardia and amoebic cysts.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃- Proto-Indo-European *-rós Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰl̥h₃rós Proto-Graeco-Phrygian *gʰlōrós Proto-Hellenic *kʰlōrós Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós) Proto-Indo-European *-nós Proto-Indo-European *-iHnos Proto-Italic *-īnos Latin -īnusder. Old French -inbor. Middle English -in English -ine English chlorine Coined by British chemist Humphry Davy in 1810 from Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós, “pale green”) + -ine.

Forms

plural
chlorines
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).