Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Polymer
/ˈpɒlɪmər/noun
A substance built from long chains of one repeated molecular unit.
The Greek roots
πολύς
polýs
many
μέρος
méros
part, share
Literally: “many parts”
The story of the word
Berzelius coined polymeric in the 1830s for compounds sharing a formula but differing in weight, which is not what the word means now. The modern sense belongs to Hermann Staudinger, who argued from 1920 that rubber and starch were single giant molecules and was mocked for years before the Nobel committee agreed in 1953. μέρος, the part, also gives isomer and polymerase.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
isomermonomerpolymerasepolygon
In a sentence
Nylon was the first polymer built entirely from laboratory chemicals.