Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Naphthalene
/ˈnæfθəliːn/noun
A white crystalline hydrocarbon of two fused benzene rings, once the standard material for mothballs.
The Greek roots
νάφθα
náphtha
flammable earth-oil
Literally: “naphtha substance”
Follow a root:νάφθα2 words
The story of the word
The Greek word was itself a loan, from Persian naft by way of Akkadian, for the petroleum that seeped out of the ground in Mesopotamia; Greek gave it the spelling that reached Europe. John Kidd isolated the compound from coal tar in 1819 and named it after the naphtha it came with. Its structure, two rings sharing an edge, was the second great test of Kekulé's benzene theory.
- How it travelled
- Persian → Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
naphthanaphthalic
In a sentence
The wardrobe still smelled of naphthalene twenty years on.
Naphthalene sublimes, which is why mothballs shrink and disappear.