ashing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of ash.

   The lab spent the afternoon ashing soil samples to measure their mineral content.

   Ashing the organic material left only a small residue behind.

   Note

   The -ing form covers every verb use of ash, not only the laboratory one. A smoker ashing a cigarette is knocking off its burnt end, and a priest ashing the faithful on Ash Wednesday is marking their foreheads with a cross. In the reducing sense the verb works with or without an object, so both ashing the samples and the samples are ashing are grammatical. When it names the procedure itself, it shades into the laboratory noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A laboratory procedure in which a sample is heated in a furnace until only a residue of ash remains, used to measure mineral content or to prepare it for further analysis.

   Ashing revealed that the flour contained about one percent mineral matter.

   The analyst chose ashing to remove organic material before measuring trace metals.

   Note

   A chemist's term for burning a sample down to what will not burn. The organic matter is oxidized away, and the inorganic residue that remains is either weighed or carried on to further analysis. It behaves as an ordinary noun, so it can be counted (two ashings of the same sample) and can take of (the ashing of flour). The same spelling also serves as the verb's -ing form.

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