Peroxide

How to spell peroxide

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce peroxide

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does peroxide mean?

1. nounA compound containing a high proportion of oxygen, especially the hydrogen peroxide used as an antiseptic and bleach.
2. verbTo bleach or lighten hair using a peroxide solution.

Peroxide in a sentence

• noun

  The nurse cleaned the graze with diluted peroxide.

• verb

  She decided to peroxide her hair a brilliant platinum shade.

• noun

  A bottle of peroxide sat in the bathroom cabinet for treating cuts.

• verb

  Many performers peroxide their roots every few weeks to stay blonde.

Where does peroxide come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Peroxide is a coined chemical term from the early 1800s, built from the prefix per-, a Latin element meaning 'thoroughly' or 'completely', attached to oxide. Oxide itself goes back to the word oxygen, which the French chemist Lavoisier created in the 1780s from the Greek oxys, meaning 'sharp' or 'acid', plus a root meaning 'to produce', because he wrongly believed oxygen was the essential ingredient of all acids. Chemists used per- to signal a compound carrying the maximum, or an unusually high, proportion of oxygen, so hydrogen peroxide simply means a hydrogen-oxygen compound rich in oxygen. The most familiar everyday peroxide is the pale liquid used as an antiseptic and a hair bleach, which is why 'peroxide blonde' entered popular speech in the twentieth century. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: writers reach for 'peroxi' but can mishandle the single 'r' and the silent shape of the '-oxide' ending.

How the word is built

• per- (thoroughly, fully oxygenated)
• oxide (compound of oxygen)