1. The action or process of cementing or producing cohesion; the state of cohesion thus produced. Also fig.
1660. Sharrock, Vegetables, 69. Strengthen those that are weak with a stick tyed above and below the grafted place … till the cementation be made and confirmed.
1799. Kirwan, Geol. Ess., 109. Earthy substances acquire a stony hardness … from … concretion, cementation.
1818. Scoresby, in Ann. Reg., Chron., 543. The cementation … of the pieces of a closely aggregated pack [of ice].
1836. Marryat, Midsh. Easy, xxxvii. To this inequality … society owes its firmest cementation.
2. ‘The process by which one solid is made to penetrate and combine with another at a high temperature so as to change the properties of one of them, without liquefaction taking place’ (Watts, Dict. Chem.).
1594. Plat, Jewell-ho., III. 86. Cementations, Blaunchers, and Citrinations.
1605. Timme, Quersit., I. xiii. 61. Their colours may be taken away by cementation and reuerberation.
1662. R. Mathew, Unl. Alch., § 101. 165. Make a good fire of Charcole about it, which is called a Wheel-fire of cementation.
1696. Phillips, Cementation, in Chymistry it is used for the purifying of Gold, by laying plates of Gold in the midst of Pouders made of Brick and Vitriol, enclos’d in a close stop’d Vessel, and set in a Fire of Reverberation.
1750. Phil. Trans., XLVI. 593. Gold … could not be separated from the Platina … either by Cementation, or by the more ordinary Operations with Lead and Antimony.
1818. Faraday, Exp. Res., xvi. (1820), 65. An attempt … to procure the alloy of steel with silver by cementation: a small piece of steel wrapped in silver leaf … was put into a crucible.
b. spec. ‘The conversion of iron into steel by absorption of carbon … from a mass of ground charcoal in which it lies embedded while exposed to strong ignition’ (Watts, Dict. Chem.).
1780. J. T. Dillon, Trav. Spain (1781), 142. Steel is made by fusion or cementation.
1816. J. Smith, Panorama Sci. & Art, I. 4. If the cementation be continued too long, the steel becomes porous … and incapable of being welded.
1862. Timbs, Year-bk. Facts, 189. The theory of Cementation, or conversion of iron into steel, has undergone a thorough investigation.
3. The process of encasing or lining with cement.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 20 Sept., 3/2. Cementation as a substitute for cremation…. Encase the body in cement … and you remove sanitary objections, and observe the formalities of the ritual.
