Hydrogen cyanide adsorbed on, or released from, a carrier in the form of small tablets, used as a fumigant and formerly as a poison gas. Usually as Zyklon B.
[1926
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung, m.b.H., Frankfort-on-the-Main... Zyklon... Apparatus for measuring the quantities of substances which generate poisonous gases—for instance, hydrocyanic acid.
Official Gazette (U.S. Patent Office) 9 November 298/1]
1939
The other type of dry cyanides, such as the zyklon products, undergo no chemical change when exposed.
C. L. Metcalf & W. P. Flint, Destructive & Useful Insects (ed. 2) ix. 281
1944
The application of Cyclon B (o.4 g./cc.) for 24 hrs. destroyed all insects but imparted a peculiar taste to the tobaccos.
Chemical Abstractsvol. 38 3416
1964
With Cyclon B they killed two and a half million at Auschwitz.
L. Deighton, Funeral in Berlin xxxi. 169
1975
Former SS soldiers..had functioned so anonymously in the camps that hardly anyone lived who could identify them as guards once manning machine guns or dropping Zyklon B tablets into gas chambers.
W. Craig, Strasbourg Legacy (1976) i. 9
1977
[He] was tried and acquitted at Nürnberg in 1948 for supplying the SS with Zykon-B gas.
Times 8 June 9/7
1978
Zyklon B, the powerful insecticide they have been using right along at the camp to fumigate the barracks, may be the surprisingly simple solution.
Old Chemistry. Particular substances of this class are distinguished by defining words (cf. sal, n.¹); e.g. †salt ammoniac (= sal ammoniac, n.), †esse…
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Zyklon typically occurs about 0.04 times per million words in modern written English.
Zyklon is in frequency band 3, which contains words occurring between 0.01 and 0.1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of Zyklon, n., 1930–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1930
0.02
1940
0.021
1950
0.023
1960
0.028
1970
0.035
1980
0.041
1990
0.044
2000
0.048
2010
0.054
Frequency of Zyklon, n., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus.
Period
Frequency per million words
2017
0.0077
2018
0.0092
2019
0.012
2020
0.014
2021
0.012
2022
0.01
2023
0.0093
2024
0.0047
Zyklon, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.