alginn.
/ˈaldʒɪn/, U.S. /ˈældʒən/ Chemistry.
A mixture of alginic acid and its salts, occurring as a viscous gum in the cell walls of brown algae (seaweed) and certain bacteria; a commercially extracted form of this, used in various manufacturing processes (cf. alginate n.).
ΚΠ
1881 E. C. C. Stanford Brit. Patent 142 2 The solution in its more or less concentrated form or completely dried is proposed to be named algin, and is probably a compound of an acid which may be named algic acid with the soda or other alkali employed.
1888 Chambers's Encycl. I. 160 The cell-walls of our common brown seaweeds..all contain algin.
1897 C. T. Davis Manuf. Leather (ed. 2) xxxvii. 505 Algine dissolved in water in the proportion of 12 to 100.
1915 Jrnl. Chem. Soc. 108 i. 932 Constituents of the cell walls of the Fucoideae are..algin, the calcium salt of algic acid.
1937 Thorpe's Dict. Appl. Chem. I. 201 Commercial algin or sodium alginate.
1954 R. E. Kirk & D. F. Othmer Encycl. Chem. Technol. XIII. 883 Gums derived from Irish and Iceland moss, karaya, algin, and quince seeds have received limited applications in textile finishes.
2011 South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) (Nexis) 8 May (Mag.) 51 If I take a very good local product and respect that product, but use modern techniques—sous vide, frozen liquid nitrogen, some gelatin, algin—I could make it better.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2012; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
<
n.1881