: a mobile liquid compound SnCl4 that fumes in moist air, that is made usually by the action of chlorine on tin (as in recovering tin from scrap), that when mixed with a little water solidifies to a soft crystalline mass of the pentahydrate and with more water slowly hydrolyzes yielding hydrochloric acid, and that is used chiefly in making other tin compounds but was formerly used in weighting silk and as a mordant and in producing military smoke screens
called alsotin tetrachloride
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