cyanide

Etymology

cyan- + -ide

noun

1. (chemistry, countable) Any compound containing the -C≡N group or the CN⁻ anion.
2. (uncountable) Sodium or potassium cyanide, used in the extraction of gold and silver or as a poison.
   The birdies all try an' hide / But they still go for peanuts / When coated with cyanide 1959, Tom Lehrer (lyrics and music), “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”
   Two doctors and a metallurgist from Scotland patented a process for dissolving gold with cyanide in 1887 and patented the recovery of gold from solution using finely divided zinc (zinc precipitation) the following year. […] The first commercial processing plant to use cyanide in the milling circuit was constructed at the Crown mine at Karangahake, New Zealand in 1889. 1988 July, Michael A. Silva, “Cyanide Heap Leaching in California”, in California Geology, volume 41, number 7, page 147
   The vast majority of the victims, on Jones’s orders, had drunk a fruit punch mixture laced with cyanide, a deadly poison. Adults had fed the poisoned liquid to the children, including infants. 2000, Sean Dolan, Everything You Need to Know About Cults, New York: The Rosen Publishing Groups, Inc., page 15
3. (uncountable) Hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide gas, a poisonous gas.

verb

1. (transitive) To treat or poison with cyanide.