Oxidation

How to spell oxidation

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce oxidation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oxidation mean?

1. nounThe chemical process in which a substance combines with oxygen or loses electrons, often producing rust, tarnish, or decay.

Oxidation in a sentence

• The oxidation of the iron railings left them streaked with rust.

• Antioxidants in the cream are meant to slow the oxidation of the skin.

Where does oxidation come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is a chemistry term that comes ultimately from oxide, the name for a compound of oxygen with another element. Oxide itself was built from oxygen, a word coined in the 1780s by French chemists working with Antoine Lavoisier, who combined the Greek oxys, meaning 'sharp' or 'acid', with the root gen-, meaning 'producing' or 'forming', because oxygen was wrongly believed at the time to be the essential ingredient of all acids. From oxide the French formed oxydation to name the process of combining with oxygen, and English adopted it in the early nineteenth century. The spelling trap is the unstressed 'i' in the middle: it sounds like a faint schwa, so writers are tempted to drop it or swap it, yet it preserves the link to oxide and to oxygen. The same oxys root also survives in the word 'oxymoron', literally a 'sharp-dull' contradiction.

How the word is built

• oxid- (from oxide, an oxygen compound)
• -ation (noun of process)