quench
n.— «During a power test, the very last before collisions could start in the machine (to the annoyance of engineers), a fault led to a warming of the busbar. As superconductivity was lost, the temperature soared in a “quench.” The machine is designed to deal with quenches, said Dr David Sankey of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire. “In general the quench protection system should intervene, firing heaters in the rest of the magnet to avoid a local hot spot by sending the whole system normal and also dumping the current.”» —“Large Hadron Collider: How a little bang killed the Big Bang” by Roger Highfield Telegraph (United Kingdom) Sept. 24, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
A young listener wonders: Why do the words icing and frosting both refer to the idea of being cold? The names for this sweet cover on a cake refer to its appearance, not its temperature. Something similar occurs with the glaze in glazed doughnut...