Word of the Day:
detonation
What It Means
An explosion or sudden report made by the near-instantaneous decomposition or combustion of unstable substances. Specifically, combustion that spreads supersonically via shock compression.
Any sudden explosion made by an exothermic process (whether chemical or not) that produces a supersonic shock wave.
the detonation of gun cotton
Did You Know?
From French détonation; equivalent to detonate + -ion.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: detonation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “detonation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/detonation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
