accelerant

plural accelerants

1. Any substance that can bond or mix with, or disturb, another substance and cause an increase in the speed of a natural or artificial chemical process.
   1. chemistryIn the context of fire protection, a substance that accelerates the development of a fire, especially some hydrocarbon-based fuel used to spread a fire caused by arson.

      Accelerant was poured across the beds where the two daughters of a family in Cheshire, Conn., had been tied before a fire during a home invasion in 2007, a fire investigator told jurors on Friday.

      2010 September 25, William Glaberson, “Accelerant Was on Girls’ Beds, Witness Tells a Connecticut Jury”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   2. chemistryA substance used to catalyze the vulcanization of rubber.
2. figurativelySomething that speeds up a process or the uptake of something else.

   Hello Neighbor’s experience reflects the rise of video sites like YouTube as an accelerant for the video game business.

   2017 August 16, Laura Hudson, “Using YouTube as an Accelerant for Video Games”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   [Mike] Skinner can be credited with pouring lots of accelerant on pop in his time. In his absence, Caribbean-derived UK bass music became the de facto sound of British youth.

   2019 January 26, Kitty Empire [pseudonym], “The Streets review – the agony and ecstasy of a great everyman”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 08 Apr 2019

   But the brutal killing did not capture widespread attention until the security footage was released on Friday, at which point it became an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.

   2025 September 9, “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

comparative more accelerant · superlative most accelerant

1. Causing acceleration or speeding up; accelerating.