Word.ws English Dictionary

flashdamp

flashdamp noun: a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen that is found in mines, and ignited quickly within a safety lamp, but that is then extinguished quickly due to the exhaust products of the flame. Flashdamp can be heavier than air (called heavy flashdamp) or lighter than air (called light flashdamp), depending on the proportion of carbon dioxide.

Noun

flashdamp (uncountable)

  1. A mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen that is found in mines, and ignited quickly within a safety lamp, but that is then extinguished quickly due to the exhaust products of the flame. Flashdamp can be heavier than air (called heavy flashdamp) or lighter than air (called light flashdamp), depending on the proportion of carbon dioxide.
    • Flashdamp is a more dangerous mixture than firedamp: first, because it is difficult of detection and often escapes the notice of the fire boss, who mistakes it for blackdamp, and has various ways of accounting for its position at the roof; second, because of the popular fallacy that this mixture...1908, J. T. Beard, C.E., E.M., Mine Gases and Explosions: Text-book for Schools and Colleges and for General Reference, 1st edition, John Wiley & Sons, page 127
    • A flashdamp mixture is often lighter than air and presents the peculiarity strange to mines, of extinguishing a light at the roof.1917, Coal Age: With Which is Consolidated The Colliery Engineer: Devoted to Coal Mining and Coke Manufacture, volume 11, McGraw-Hill, page 886

Examples of flashdamp in a sentence

  • For illustration, let it be required to calculate the specific gravity of flashdamp (undiluted mixture of methane and carbon dioxide) directly from the specific gravities of these gases[…]1920, James T. Beard, C.E., E.M., Mine Gases and Ventilation: Textbook for Students of Mining, Mining engineers and Candidates Preparing...
  • [An exam question under the Coal Mines Regulation Act on the topic of Gases, Shot-Firing and Safety Lamps] What is Flashdamp?1947, Alberta Dept of Lands and Mines. Mines Branch, Annual Report of the Mines Branch of the Department of Lands and Mines of the Province...

Origin of flashdamp

From flash + damp, with 'damp' having the meaning of 'gas', as in old German, modern Dutch, and Danish.

Questions about flashdamp

What does flashdamp mean?
Flashdamp means a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen that is found in mines, and ignited quickly within a safety lamp, but that is then extinguished quickly due to the exhaust products of the flame. Flashdamp can be heavier than air (called heavy flashdamp) or lighter than air (called light flashdamp), depending on the proportion of carbon dioxide.
How do you use flashdamp in a sentence?
For illustration, let it be required to calculate the specific gravity of flashdamp (undiluted mixture of methane and carbon dioxide) directly from the specific gravities of these gases[…]
What part of speech is flashdamp?
Flashdamp is a noun.

Words near flashdamp in the dictionary

  1. flashcore
  2. flashcrowd
  3. flashcrowds
  4. flashcube
  5. flashcubes
  6. flashdamp
  7. flashdisk
  8. flashdisks
  9. flashdrive
  10. flashdrives
  11. flashed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flashdamp (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.

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