Relating to nitrogen or containing nitrogen, especially in chemical compounds; characteristic of or containing the element azote (an old name for nitrogen).
From azote (French for nitrogen, from Greek a-, 'without' + zōē, 'life') + -ic. This adjective was common in the 18th-19th centuries when chemists still used 'azote' instead of the modern term 'nitrogen.'
The word 'azotic' preserves an interesting piece of chemistry history—early French chemists thought nitrogen was 'without life' because it couldn't support combustion, so they named it 'azote,' and this root lives on in modern chemistry terms.
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