A white, crystalline, deliquescent solid, ZnCl2, used as a preservative, a flux, and in Leclanché cells.
1851
ZnCl, 9ZnO..[is prepared] by precipitating aqueous zinc-chloride with an insufficient quantity of ammonia and filtering immediately.
H. Watts, translation of L. Gmelin, Hand-book of Chemistryvol. V. xxviii. 32
1911
Zinc chloride, ZnCl2, is produced by heating the metal in dry chlorine gas, when it distils over as a white translucent mass.
Encyclopædia Britannicavol. XXVIII. 984/1
1981
Zinc chloride, which is exceptionally soluble in water.., has a range of uses that extend from embalming, to fireproofing lumber, to the refining of petroleum.
zinc chloride typically occurs about 0.1 times per million words in modern written English.
zinc chloride is in frequency band 4, which contains words occurring between 0.1 and 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 zinc chloride, n., 1860–2010
* 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
1860
0.075
1870
0.14
1880
0.22
1890
0.37
1900
0.49
1910
0.57
1920
0.63
1930
0.61
1940
0.51
1950
0.4
1960
0.31
1970
0.21
1980
0.13
1990
0.095
2000
0.081
2010
0.068
Frequency of zinc chloride, 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
0.015
2018
0.018
2019
0.014
2020
0.012
2021
0.0088
2022
0.0098
2023
0.0057
2024
0.0076
Originally published as part of the entry for zinc, n.
zinc, n. was first published in 1921; not fully revised.