Polyester

How to spell polyester

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce polyester

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does polyester mean?

1. nounA synthetic polymer widely used to make wrinkle-resistant fabric and plastic resins.

Polyester in a sentence

• The shirt was made from a blend of cotton and polyester.

• Cheap office chairs are often upholstered in polyester that holds odours.

Where does polyester come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a twentieth-century chemistry coinage built from two parts. The prefix poly- comes from the Greek polus, meaning 'many' or 'much', and signals that the material is a polymer, a long chain made by linking many small molecules together. The second half, ester, is itself a chemical term coined in German in the 1840s, apparently blended from Essig 'vinegar' and Aether 'ether' to name a particular family of compounds. Put together, polyester literally means 'many esters', describing the repeating ester links in the molecule. The word came into ordinary English use in the 1920s and especially after the 1940s, when chemists developed the strong synthetic fibre that turned the term into a household word for clothing fabric.

How the word is built

• poly- (many)
• ester (a class of organic compound)