Word.ws English Dictionary

carburet

carburet noun: a carbide.

Noun

carburet (plural carburets)

  1. (obsolete) A carbide.

Verb

carburet (third-person singular simple present carburets, present participle (US) carbureting or (UK) carburetting, simple past and past participle (US) carbureted or (UK) carburetted)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To react with carbon.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To enrich an illuminating gas with carbon-rich fuel.
    • Where there may be objections to the use or application of the foregoing mode of using peat gas for illuminating purposes, I employ another method of obtaining that object, and which is to carburet the peat gas by means of charred peat, in the same way as I carburet the vapours of sulphur to educe...
  3. (transitive) To mix air with hydrocarbons, especially with petroleum, as in an internal combustion engine.
  4. (transitive) To equip with a carburetor.
    • Later models were fuel-injected, but the earliest ones were carbureted.

Forms of carburet

Noun
pluralcarburets
alternative formcarburate
Verb
third-person singular presentcarburets
present participle UScarbureting
present participle UKcarburetting
past participle UScarbureted
past UScarbureted
past participle UKcarburetted
past UKcarburetted

Origin of carburet

Coined in 1788 by the translator of de Morveau, Lavoisier et al.'s 1787 book Méthode de nomenclature chimique James St. John as a translation and partial calque of French carbure, with the original (noun) sense displaced by carbide during the mid-19th century. By surface analysis, carbon + -uret.

Words formed from carburet

Questions about carburet

What does carburet mean?
Carburet means a carbide.
What part of speech is carburet?
Carburet can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of carburet?
The plural of carburet is carburets.

Words near carburet in the dictionary

  1. carburating
  2. carburation
  3. carburations
  4. carburator
  5. carburazepam
  6. carburet
  7. carburetant
  8. carburetants
  9. carbureted
  10. carbureter
  11. carbureters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carburet (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “carburet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carburet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.