someone told me the suffix -ide (as in fluoride, oxide, bromide, chloride…) comes from the Greek word for death or somehting similar. I s this true or not? I could not find anything on the Internet about it, thought I’d ask…
marnouk, welcome to the agora. great question—i have no good answer to it. the OED says of the suffix -ide:
a suffix used to form names of simple compounds of an element with another element or a radical. It is added to the stem or an abbreviated form of the name, and was first used in ox-ide (F. oxyde, Lavoisier) from oxygen, whence it was extended to other elements, sometimes displacing other derivatives in -et, -uret, previously used. Thus chloride of nitrogen or (more tersely) nitrogen chloride; hydrogen arsenide (arseniuret). The use of this suffix has been greatly extended in organic chemistry, notably in the generic names of various kinds of naturally occurring compounds, as GLYCOSIDE, PEPTIDE, SACCHARIDE (qq.v.); it is used spec. to form the names of glycosides from those of the corresponding sugars (as galactoside from galactose, furanoside from furanose).
In systematic terminology, a compound of oxygen with any other element is called an oxide; in other binary compounds -ide is combined with the (contracted) name of the more electro-negative of the two elements: thus fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine form with each other in order, and with any other element or radical except oxygen, fluorides, chlorides, bromides, iodides; sulphur, selenium, tellurium form with elements other than these, sulphides, selenides, tellurides; and so on. Examples are bromine chloride, sulphur bromide, carbon sulphide; hydrogen selenide, telluride, phosphide, arsenide, cyanide; boron carbide, boron hydride, silicon hydride, ethyl hydride; copper arsenide, carbide, nitride, hydrides of metals and organic radicals. The suffix is also used in AMIDE, ANHYDRIDE, CYANIDE n., ANILIDE, and other derivatives from names of compound radicals. Mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, etc. are prefixed, to indicate the number of combining equivalents, as in sulphur monochloride S[sub]2[/sub]Cl[sub]2[/sub](= SCl), sulphur dichloride SCl[sub]2[/sub], and so on.
They give no further etymology, and I can’t find much on the web, either. To stay on the Greek path, I’ve been looking through my dictionaries and thinking, but I can only come up with one or two greek words having something to do with death that resemble -ide in sound or spelling. The first is Aïdês (accent on the i), Hades, the region of the dead. The second is aïdês (accent on the long e) meaning annihilated.
Homer and Sophocles used ide or êde for the conjunction and. It could follow that, as in the examples above, sulphur dichloride might mean "sulfur AND two chlorides." This seems to me to be the best bet. Of course, that would have to be reconciled with the first, French, usage, in which the spelling was -yde. (Incidentally, greek words starting with ud- deal with water, udôr. Could this be the root of -yde? It’s conceivable (if a stretch), since the solvent used in the lion’s share of chemical reactions is water).
Now, if I were asking the question, I might have gotten my I-sounding suffixes confused and might be linking the wrong suffix to "death" or the like. So I’ll include the following: Let’s take a disaccharide (two sugar molecules linked by a covalent bond). That bond can be hydroLYZED by a molecule of water. In this case, -lyze comes from Greek lusis, a loosing, setting free, releasing. And, i guess, in the process of lysing a molecule you are killing it. ??? Clearly, all of this is a stretch.
And, of course, there’s the suffix -cide from Latin caedere, to cut, kill. But that doesn’t have much to do with chemistry.
I think that most chemical suffixes are Latin adjectival suffixes. The one that I have been able to verify so far is -ate, a perfect participle: acetate means roughly "acetated", nitrate "nitrated". The suffix -ite might have the same origin.
The -ide may be the same suffix as in timid, giving the meaning of "entering a state".
More suffixes may have originated from existing languages. My guess is that -ic and -ous are Latin as well. Others may have been conventionally invented to follow that pattern. I would love to get explanations of, for example, -ure: Latin passive?
And then there is organic chemistry: -ine, -one, -ane, -ol, -yde, -yne, ... Many of those are abbreviations of the names of model compunds: the -ydes are aldehydes etc.
The fist person to use, for example, -ous and -at(um), seems to have been the Swede Torbern Bergman, in the late 18th C, and his Linnaeus-inspired system of dual nomenclature seems to be the start of the systematic chemical nomenclature as we see it today.
-ide, -id
suffix forming nouns
1 [added to the combining form of the nonmetallic or electronegative elements] indicating a binary compound
example: sodium chloride
2 indicating an organic compound derived from another
example: acetanilide
3 indicating one of a class of compounds or elements
example: peptide
example: lanthanide
[ETYMOLOGY: from German -id, from French oxide, oxide, based on the suffix of acide acid]
so maybe it isn’t from homer, to whom i like to attribute everything :’(
Thanks all for the responses! I was just wondering about it ever since someone mentioned to me that all the chemicals in food and other things these days you need to avoid, especially the -ides, can cause illness or death so when you see a chemical ending in -ide to remember that it may be toxic and cause illness or death.
I guess the "ides" of March are upon us, Caeser got killed on the Ides… oops, I think that was in Latin not Greek. Nevermind. 8)
I vote for Latin acidum instead of French acide as the origin.
Bernard Guyton de Morveau thougt up a nomenclature, and in 1787, de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet och Fourcroy published "Methode de nomenclature chimique", which got the upper hand. But prior to this, de Morveau in 1782 published a translation of some of Bergman’s works. Comparing those, it seems that Bergman was the initiator. He disapproved of some of de Morveau’s terms, because Bergman wanted a Latin foundation, not a French one, but they agreed on most things.
Your post was entered while I was researching Bergman. So that you get the right ideas, don’t be afraid of all ides. You really need for example sodium chloride, i.e. kitchen salt, to stay healthy (and alive!) On the other hand, stay away from sodium cyanide, unless you, like Tom Lehrer, want to go poisoning pigeons in the park.
[quote author=marnouk link=board=translate;num=1082731343;start=0#4 date=04/23/04 at 15:09:07]Thanks all for the responses! I was just wondering about it ever since someone mentioned to me that all the chemicals in food and other things these days you need to avoid, especially the -ides, can cause illness or death so when you see a chemical ending in -ide to remember that it may be toxic and cause illness or death.
I guess the "ides" of March are upon us, Caeser got killed on the Ides… oops, I think that was in Latin not Greek. Nevermind. 8)
It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to cut "-ides" out of your diet. i can think of a few that are kinda important, like sodium chloride and sodium iodide (salt) and hydrogen hydroxide (water). For the most part, this suffix is so common and general that basing health decisions on it would not be a good idea.
I love to see all this speculation and discuss, especially when a suitable answer, if not completely definitive) is found (acide). It is like watching people think!
david:
hydrogen hydroxide
I remember seeing water named "hydrogen dioxide" before!
There was some joke flyer about the dangers of hydrogen dioxide that someone took around doorbelling with a petition to have it banned. I guess many people signed it!
[quote author=Sitran link=board=translate;num=1082731343;start=0#9 date=04/23/04 at 18:24:59]I love to see all this speculation and discuss, especially when a suitable answer, if not completely definitive) is found (acide). It is like watching people think!
david:
I remember seeing water named "hydrogen dioxide" before!
There was some joke flyer about the dangers of hydrogen dioxide that someone took around doorbelling with a petition to have it banned. I guess many people signed it!
Sitran
i’ve seen the same flyer, sitran. you could also legitimately call it dihydrogen oxide. that might be what we both saw, since hydrogen dioxide couldn’t exist (since hydrogen can only have two electrons in its 1s orbital blah blah blah). but i can’t remember exactly. it’s a shame that people don’t remember their high school chemistry and biology! when i think back, there was a lot of information in those classes—if we remembered it all, we’d be a lot more scientifically literate than we are as a society. a shame we don’t, for the most part. as for my first post above, i was worried that people wouldn’t be able to follow my haphazard flight of ideas.
[quote author=Sitran link=board=translate;num=1082731343;start=0#9 date=04/23/04 at 18:24:59] . . . david:
I remember seeing water named "hydrogen dioxide" before!
There was some joke flyer about the dangers of hydrogen dioxide that someone took around doorbelling with a petition to have it banned. I guess many people signed it!
Sitran
Actually it was oxygen dihydride (remember, two hydrogens in H[sub]2[/sub]O! ;) ). That old joke has been running around the Internet for a while, but I remember reading recently in the Reuters Odd News feed that some place in Californial almost banned oxygen dihydride until someone finally caught on. Bad research on the Internet by someone on their staff. (You mean all the stuff you read on the Internet isn’t true?)
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park!
. . .
When the birdies see us they will all try and hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide!
Thanks, Anders!
My wife misunderstood the priest: she didn’t realize he really said for better or perverse. ;)
