cyanide

1. (inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, countable) Any compound containing the -C≡N group or the CN⁻ anion.countable

2. (inorganic chemistry) Sodium or potassium cyanide, used in the extraction of gold and silver or as a poison.Examples: "The birdies all try an' hide / But they still go for peanuts / When coated with cyanide"; "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."; "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."countableuncountable

3. (inorganic chemistry, uncountable) Hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide gas, a poisonous gas.uncountable