Nitro

How to spell nitro

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nitro

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nitro mean?

1. nounAn informal name for nitroglycerine, a highly unstable liquid explosive.
2. nounInformal term for nitrous oxide injected into an engine to give a sudden burst of power.

Nitro in a sentence

• The demolition crew handled the nitro with extreme caution.

• The driver hit the nitro to overtake on the final straight.

• A single jolt can set off unstable nitro during transport.

• Tuners fit a nitro kit to squeeze extra horsepower from the motor.

Where does nitro come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is a short clipping of longer chemical names such as nitroglycerine and nitrous oxide, all of which share the combining form nitro-. That form descends from the Greek nitron, the name for a naturally occurring soda or saltpetre that the ancient world scraped from dry lake beds and used for cleaning and preserving. The Greeks in turn may have borrowed the term from older Near Eastern languages, which is why it also turns up in early Hebrew and Egyptian sources. Latin took it up as nitrum, and from the eighteenth century chemists fixed nitro- as the label for compounds containing nitrogen. By the twentieth century English speakers were simply saying nitro for the explosive nitroglycerine and, later, for the nitrous oxide that boosts a racing engine. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, with the single t and the plain -o ending matching the way it is said.

How the word is built

• nitro- (from Greek nitron: native soda, saltpetre), used as a standalone clipping of words like nitroglycerine and nitrous oxide