Word.ws English Dictionary

gein

gein noun: humic acid.

Noun

gein (uncountable)

  1. (dated) Humic acid.
    • Hence, a most interesting conclusion—without salts and gein we have no vegetable production. The gein in solution is essential to fruit, and yet, without the salts, the insolubility of gein would leave the soil barren.1843 January 9, Henry Bidleman Bascom, “Glance at the Natural History and Philosophy of Agriculture […]”, in Thomas N. Ralston, editor, Posthumous Works of the Rev. Henry B. Bascom, […], volume 2...
    • The humic acid and other similar acids (ulmic, geïn, &c.) have a very strong affinity for ammonia, which itself is essential to the nourishment of forest growth, as plants have only a limited power of assimilating the free nitrogen of the air.1893, John Nisbet, Soil and Situation in Relation to Forest Growth, page 10

Origin of gein

Borrowed from German Geïn, coined by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1832, from Ancient Greek γήινος (gḗinos, “of earth”), from γῆ (gê, “earth”).

Questions about gein

What does gein mean?
Gein means humic acid.
What part of speech is gein?
Gein is a noun.

Words near gein in the dictionary

  1. Geil
  2. geilfine
  3. Geils
  4. geilsiekte
  5. Geilston Bay
  6. gein
  7. Geiranger
  8. geire
  9. geires
  10. Geiringer
  11. Geiringer-Laman theorem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gein (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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