phlogiston
- n a hypothetical substance once believed to be present in all combustible materials and to be released during burning
- On the other hand, I'm not going to do like Krugman and dismiss Austrian economics as "about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire.
- He labored under an old notion that combustible substances had a constituent, "phlogiston," which departed from them when they burned (as soot, for example).
- Chemistry would not have improved much since Lavoisier's youth if chemists were still loosely calling all combustible materials phlogiston.