Chemicals

How to spell chemicals

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce chemicals

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chemicals mean?

1. nounSubstances, especially those prepared or used in chemistry or industry.

Chemicals in a sentence

• The factory stores hazardous chemicals in a locked unit.

• Gardeners often avoid harsh chemicals on their vegetable beds.

Where does chemicals come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

The word traces back to 'alchemy', the medieval pursuit of transforming base metals into gold, which English took from the Old French 'alquemie' and Medieval Latin 'alchymia'. That term in turn came from the Arabic 'al-kimiya', combining the article 'al' (the) with 'kimiya', a word for transmutation that itself may derive from a Greek term tied to Egypt and metalworking. By the seventeenth century writers had dropped the Arabic 'al-' to coin 'chemic' and then 'chemical', describing substances studied by the emerging science of chemistry. The noun 'chemical', meaning a distinct substance prepared or used in chemistry, became common in the 1700s, and the plural 'chemicals' soon followed. The 'ch' spelling, pronounced like a hard 'k', is a lingering echo of that Greek and Arabic ancestry, which is exactly why the opening of the word can trip writers who expect it to sound the way it looks.

How the word is built

• chem- (from alchemy, the medieval art of transformation)
• -ical (adjective suffix)
• -s (plural)