Contextualizebeta

mercaptan

noun
/məˈkapt(ə)n/UK/mɚˈkæpt(ə)n/US

Etymology

Etymology tree German Mercaptanbor. English mercaptan Borrowed from German Mercaptan, from Danish mercaptan; coined by organic chemist William Christopher Zeise in 1832 from mer(curius) (“mercury”) + captan(s) (“capturing”), because the thiolate group bonds very strongly with mercury compounds.

  1. derived from mercaptan
  2. borrowed from Mercaptan

Definitions

  1. Any of a class of organic compounds of sulphur, ( R-SH ) where R represents an alkyl or…

    Any of a class of organic compounds of sulphur, ( R-SH ) where R represents an alkyl or other organic substituent. They tend to be foul-smelling. They are also termed thiols or thioalcohols.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for mercaptan. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA