from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun An asphyxiating mixture of gases, primarily nitrogen and carbon dioxide, left in a mine after a fire or an explosion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun mining Suffocating gases present in a coal mine after an explosion caused by firedamp, consisting of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and sometimes hydrogen sulfide.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun a toxic mixture of gases (including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and nitrogen) after an explosion of firedamp in a mine
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[after + damp, gas.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From after- + damp.
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Examples
Filled with deadly afterdamp 'cause owners didn't care,
But the flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther end.
All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they were helped to their feet.
Two or three young fellows meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them.
An I minded my feyther an uncle -- how they was braat home both togither, when I wor nobbut thirteen years old -- not a scar on em, nobbut a little blood on my feyther's forehead -- but stone dead, both on em -- from the afterdamp.
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