n.
- Any of a class of powerful explosives composed of nitroglycerin or ammonium nitrate dispersed in an absorbent medium with a combustible dope, such as wood pulp, and an antacid, such as calcium carbonate, used in blasting and mining.
- Slang.
- Something exceptionally exciting or wonderful.
- Something exceptionally dangerous: These allegations are political dynamite.
- To blow up, shatter, or otherwise destroy with or as if with dynamite.
- To charge with dynamite.
Outstanding; superb: a dynamite performance; a dynamite outfit.
[Swedish dynamit, from Greek dunamis, power. See dynamic.]
dynamiter dy'na·mit'er n.WORD HISTORY The same man who gave us dynamite gave us the Nobel Peace Prize, an irony that was surely not lost on the pacifistic Alfred Nobel himself. It is perhaps less well known that Nobel also contributed the word dynamite. Coined in Swedish in the form dynamit, the word was taken from Greek dunamis, "power," and the Swedish suffix -it, which corresponds to the English suffix -ite used in various scientific fields. Greek dunamis also gave us words such as dynamic and dynamo and itself probably goes back to the verb dunasthai, "to be able," from which comes English dynasty.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
