carbon
n. uncountablen. a chemical element found in all living things. In modern talk, people often use this word to mean the gases that cause climate change.
n. a nonmetallic chemical element that serves as the fundamental building block of organic life. In environmental contexts, it frequently functions as a metonym for carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions.
Plants absorb carbon from the air to grow.
The government is introducing a new tax to help companies reduce their total carbon footprint.
While carbon is essential for the formation of complex biological molecules, its excessive release into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 has significantly accelerated the global greenhouse effect.
Borrowed from French carbone, coined by Antoine Lavoisier, from Latin carbō, carbōnem (“charcoal, coal”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *kerh₃- (“to burn”). By surface analysis, carbo- + -on.
Uncountable when referring to the element or general emissions; countable only in technical chemistry when referring to specific atoms or isotopes.