Oxidative

How to spell oxidative

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce oxidative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oxidative mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or involving oxidation, the chemical process in which a substance combines with oxygen or loses electrons.

Oxidative in a sentence

• The supplement is marketed as a defence against oxidative stress in cells.

• Engineers studied the oxidative damage that rust had caused to the bridge supports.

Where does oxidative come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is a relatively modern chemical adjective built from oxide plus the Latin-derived suffix -ative, which marks a tendency or function. The core, oxide, was coined in late eighteenth-century France as oxyde, formed by the chemist Antoine Lavoisier and his colleagues from oxygene, the name they gave to the newly identified element oxygen. That element name itself was assembled from two Greek pieces: oxys, meaning 'sharp' or 'acid', and the root -genes, meaning 'producing' or 'forming', because the early chemists mistakenly believed oxygen was the essential ingredient that made substances acidic. English adopted oxide directly from this French source in the early 1800s, and oxidative followed as the natural adjective describing processes that add oxygen or remove electrons. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle vowel: the 'i' after 'ox' is barely sounded, so writers are tempted to drop it or swap it for an 'a'.

How the word is built

• oxid- (from oxide, an oxygen compound, ultimately Greek oxys 'sharp, acid'
• genes 'producing')
• -ative (adjective suffix meaning 'tending to')