white lead

• whitelead

In the sense of tin, calque of Latin plumbum album (“tin”, literally “white lead”) already used before our era, as well as plumbum candidum (“tin”, literally “white-shining lead”) and Arabic رَصَاص أَبْيَض‎ (raṣāṣ ʔabyaḍ, “tin”, literally “white lead”), distinguished from plumbum nigrum (“lead”, literally “black lead”) / رَصَاص أَسْوَد‎ (raṣāṣ ʔaswad, “lead”, literally “black lead”), as tin and lead were improperly distinguished before modernity.

white lead (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) tin, golden marcasite
   • 1671, Webster, John, Metallographia: Or, an history of metals., London, page 271:

     It is not amiſs here to give the differences betwixt white Lead, or Tin, Biſmuth, Tin-glaſs, or aſh-coloured Lead, and this common Lead, which they call black Lead;

2. A basic lead carbonate formerly widely used for a white pigment in paint.

   Synonyms: lead white, flake white, silver white, slate white, Berlin white, Cremnitz white/Kremnitz white, Crems white/Krems white, Nottingham white, Vienna white

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 40:

     The beginning of a new episode of work for Bradly was an agitated niggling over six-by-four squares of cardboard coated with size and white lead, prepared by himself to save an experimental waste of canvas.

• white lead ore (“cerussite”)