process

from The Century Dictionary.

• To proceed against by legal process; summon in a court of law.
• To reproduce, as a drawing, etc., by any mechanical process, especially by a photographic process. See photo-process.
• In leather-making, to treat or soak in liquor.
• noun A proceeding or moving forward; progressive movement; gradual advance; continuous proceeding.
• noun Course; lapse; a passing or elapsing; passage, as of time.
• noun Manner of proceeding or happening; way in which something goes on; course or order of events.
• noun An action, operation, or method of treatment applied to something; a series of actions or experiments: as, a chemical process; a manufacturing process; mental process.
• noun Series of motions or changes going on, as in growth, decay, etc.: as, the process of vegetation; the process of decomposition.
• noun In law: The summons, mandate, or command by which a defendant or a thing is brought before the court for litigation: so called as being the primary part of the proceedings, by which the rest is directed.
• noun The whole course of proceedings in a cause, real or personal, civil or criminal, from the original writ to the end of the suit.
• noun Hence A relation; narrative; story; detailed account.
• noun Proclamation.
• noun In anatomy and zoology, a processus; an outgrowth or outgrowing part; a protuberance; a prominence; a projection: used in the widest sense, specific application being made by some qualifying term: as, coracoid process.
• noun In botany, a projection from a surface; specifically, in mosses, one of the principal divisions or segments of the inner peristome.
• noun Same as photo-process: commonly used attributively: as, process blocks, process cuts, process pictures, etc.
• noun In fish-culture, a process of fecundating spawn, invented by V. P. Vrasski. It differs from the moist process by requiring two vessels, one for the spawn, which is placed in it without water, and the other for the milt, to which water is added to moisten the eggs. By the dry process, scarcely one per cent. of the eggs escape fecundation, while in the moist method ten or twelve per cent. of the spawn may be lost.
• noun In assaying. See assaying.
• noun Of the sphenoid, the inferior hook-like extremity of the internal pterygoid plate, under which the tendon of the tensor palati plays.
• noun Of the turbinate bone, a flattened plate descending from the attached margin, forming, when articulated, a part of the inner wall of the antrum below the entrance.
• noun Same as lacrymal process.
• noun Same as nasal spine (which see, under nasal).
• noun See the adjectives.
• noun A short, stout, pyramidal process projecting downward from the onter part of the distal extremity of the radius.
• noun A short cylindrical eminence at the inner and back part of the distal extremity of the ulna.
• noun A long, slender, tapering process projecting downward and forward from the outer part of the under surface of the petrous portion of the temporal bone: it is developed from independent centers of ossification, corresponding to the tympanohyal and stylohyal bones.
• noun Inferior, the folded margin of the sphenoid overhanging the middle meatus. Also called superior and middle spongy bones.
• noun Of the temporal, a flattened plate of bone on the under surface of the petrous portion, immediately back of the glenoid fossa, and partly surrounding the styloid process at its base.
• noun Cowles's process, a process for making aluminium and other alloys, by placing a mixture of alumina, carbon, and the metal to be alloyed between two large carbon rods, the terminals of an interrupted current of high power. The intense heat melts the metal and converts the alumina into aluminium, while the oxygen escapes as carbonic oxid.
• noun Deville's process, a process in which aluminium sodium chlorid is reduced by sodium, with cryolite or fluor-sparas a flux. Deville was the first to produce aluminium in an almost pure state (1854) and to determine its properties en masse. He also discovered simultaneously with Bunsen a method of decomposing alum sodium chlorid by an electric battery.
• noun Grabau's process, a process based on the electrolysis of a bath composed of aluminium fluoride and caustic soda of potash, or their carbonates. The substitution of aluminium fluoride for cryolite greatly increases the purity of the metal.
• noun Hall's process, an electrolvtic process by which most of the aluminium in the United States is produced. In this process the alumina is dissolved in a fused bath composed of the fluorides of aluminium and sodium, and then electrolysed by a current with a carbonaceous anode. The positive electrode may be of carbon, copper, platinum, or any other suitable material, copper being preferred on account of the copper oxid which protects the electrode from further oxidation. In the production of aluminium alloys the metal to be alloyed is used as a negative electrode and the alloy formed sinks to the bottom of the crucible. In the Hall process, as used by some of the larger manufacturers, the electrolytic tanks are iron troughs lined with carbon and connected up in series, each trough being connected by a stout copper bar with the anodes of the adjoining trough or with the negative conductor of the generator, according to its position in the series. Thus the tank itself acts as the cathode. The anodes are carbon rods suspended from a copper bar, which are placed above the vat and are partly immersed in the fused electrolyte.
• noun Héroult's process, a process similar to that of Hall but. discovered independently by Héroult in 1886. It is the only process which is used for the production of aluminium on a large scale outside of the United States.
• noun Minet's process, a process consisting in the electrolysis of a mixture of sodium chlorid with either aluminium fluoride or the separate or double fluorides of aluminium and sodium. The mixture is melted in a non-metallic crucible, or in a metallic crucible inclosed in a thin refractory jacket to avoid filtration, and the aluminium fluoride decomposed is regenerated by causing the fluorin vapors evolved to act on bauxite or alumina placed somewhere about the anode.
• noun Rose's process (1855), a modification of Deville's method, cryolite being substituted for aluminium chlorid.
• noun Wöhler's process. Wöhler is regarded as the first to succeed in isolating aluminium. In his experiments of 1845 he reduced aluminium chlorid by means of pure potassium. The metal was obtained in the shape of small globules and contained some platinum from the tube in which it had been prepared. He was also the first to give a more or less accurate description of the chemical properties of aluminium and to determine its specific gravity.
• noun A process for desilverizing lead by treating it with zinc and subjecting the mixture to a temperature sufficiently high to melt the lead but leave the zinc-silver alloy merely softened. During the operation air is excluded in order to prevent the formation of metallic oxids.
• noun A method, also invented by Castner, of making metallic sodium by the electrolysis of fused caustic soda. Sodium hydroxid (caustic soda) is reduced by heating it with carbon, the carbon being in small grains which are loaded with iron so as not to float in the fused mass but to remain covered by it. The process does not require a very high temperature. By means of it sodium was produced at a small fraction of its previous cost, and metallic aluminium (which later was further cheapened by electric reduction) was reduced in price.
• noun Fibers of the sacrosciatic ligament reflected on to the ramus of theischium.
• noun An electrothermic process for the production of steel. The furnace used in this process is of the tilting open-hearth pattern, consisting of an iron casing lined with dolomite brick and magnesite brick around the openings. The electrodes are square prisms and are made of retort-coke containing some sulphur. They are introduced through the roof and are water-jacketed for a short distance above and below then- passage through the roof. The charge consists of miscellaneous scrap and some iron ore and lime. The electrodes are suspended just above the slag line and the electric current passes from one electrode through the slag and the molten metal to the other electrode, its intensity being regulated by adjusting the width of the air-gap between the electrodes and the slag.
• noun One of the two processes which by fusion form the jugum of the Brachiopoda.
• noun A cementation process for hardening the surface of steel plates similar to the Harvey process but with certain secret variations or additions.
• noun A process for making joints by bringing the two elements just to fusion at their contact-edges, so that they become one where they touch, without a solder or alloy.
• noun a charcoal hearth (process) for refining cast-iron, used largely in Sweden (Swedish Walloon) and in Lancashire and South Wales (English Walloon). The charcoal hearths are usually low rectangular chambers with one or more twyers. The fuel is charcoal, and the wrought-iron produced by this process is superior to that produced by puddling, on account of its freedom from phosphorus. In Sweden the Walloon process is applied chiefly to the manufacturing of Dannemora iron.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of proceeding; continued forward movement; procedure; progress; advance.
• noun A series of actions, motions, or occurrences; progressive act or transaction; continuous operation; normal or actual course or procedure; regular proceeding
• noun obsolete A statement of events; a narrative.
• noun (Anat. & Zoöl.) Any marked prominence or projecting part, especially of a bone; anapophysis.
• noun (Law) The whole course of proceedings in a cause real or personal, civil or criminal, from the beginning to the end of the suit; strictly, the means used for bringing the defendant into court to answer to the action; -- a generic term for writs of the class called judicial.
• noun (Chem.) a method of obtaining chlorine gas by passing hydrochloric acid gas over heated slag which has been previously saturated with a solution of some metallic salt, as sulphate of copper.
• noun (Practice) a writ of execution in an action at law.