Silicone

How to spell silicone

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce silicone

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does silicone mean?

1. nounA flexible, water-resistant synthetic polymer made from silicon and oxygen, used in sealants, lubricants, cookware, and medical implants.

Silicone in a sentence

• The plumber applied a bead of silicone around the edge of the bath to stop leaks.

• The baking tray was lined with a flexible silicone mat that nothing sticks to.

Where does silicone come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin silex (stem silic-), meaning 'flint' or 'hard stone', the same root that gives chemistry the element name silicon. The synthetic substance was named by analogy with organic chemistry: the British chemist Frederic Stanley Kipping adopted the term in the early 1900s while studying these silicon-based polymers, and the ending -one echoes compounds such as 'ketone', because the materials were first thought to resemble those structures. Although that resemblance turned out to be inaccurate, the convenient name stuck and came to describe the whole family of rubbery, heat-resistant polymers built on chains of silicon and oxygen. The crucial spelling trap is the final 'e': silicone (the man-made polymer used in sealants and implants) keeps the -one ending, whereas silicon (the chemical element in computer chips) does not. Remembering that the -one suffix marks a manufactured compound, just like ketone, helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• silic- (from Latin silex, silicis: flint, hard stone)
• -one (chemical suffix, modelled on ketone)