Ionic

How to spell ionic

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ionic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ionic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to ions, or to a chemical bond formed when atoms gain or lose electrons to become charged.

Ionic in a sentence

• Common table salt is held together by an ionic bond between sodium and chloride.

• The lab measured the ionic concentration of the water sample.

Where does ionic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek ion, the neuter present participle of ienai, a verb that simply meant 'to go'. In 1834 the English scientist Michael Faraday needed names for the charged particles that travel through a solution during electrolysis, and on the advice of the scholar William Whewell he borrowed that Greek sense of 'the thing that goes', giving us 'ion'. The adjective 'ionic' was then formed by adding the ordinary Latin-derived suffix -ic, meaning 'relating to', so it literally means 'relating to ions'. The spelling trap lives at the front: it begins with the two vowels io-, not a single letter, because the root is genuinely 'ion'. By coincidence the same spelling also names the Ionic order of Greek architecture, but that 'Ionic' comes from a completely different source, the region of Ionia in ancient Asia Minor.

How the word is built

• ion (from Greek ion, 'going', the moving charged particle)
• -ic (adjective suffix, 'relating to')