Word.ws English Dictionary

phlogistic

phlogistic adjective: inflammatory; pertaining to inflammations and fevers.

Adjective

phlogistic (comparative more phlogistic, superlative most phlogistic)

  1. Inflammatory; pertaining to inflammations and fevers.
  2. (historical) Pertaining to or containing phlogiston.
    • His experiments, with their phlogistic explanations, led him to believe that the only distinct species of air were the fixed, alkaline, and acid.2004, Robert E Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, Pennsylvania State University, published 2004, page 100
  3. (obsolete) Burning, fiery.

Forms of phlogistic

comparativemore phlogistic
superlativemost phlogistic
alternative formphlogistick

Origin of phlogistic

From Ancient Greek φλογιστός (phlogistós, “flammable”), from φλόξ (phlóx, “flame”); in chemistry sense reinforced by phlogist(on) + -ic.

Words formed from phlogistic

Questions about phlogistic

What does phlogistic mean?
Phlogistic means inflammatory; pertaining to inflammations and fevers.
What part of speech is phlogistic?
Phlogistic is an adjective.

Words near phlogistic in the dictionary

  1. phloephagous
  2. phlog
  3. phlogging
  4. phlogistian
  5. phlogistians
  6. phlogistic
  7. phlogistical
  8. phlogistically
  9. phlogisticate
  10. phlogisticated
  11. phlogisticated air

Source and license

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