Sulfate

How to spell sulfate

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sulfate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sulfate mean?

1. nounA salt or ester of sulfuric acid, common in fertilisers, detergents, and minerals.

Sulfate in a sentence

• The shampoo label proudly stated that it contained no sulfate.

• Farmers spread ammonium sulfate across the field to add nitrogen to the soil.

Where does sulfate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a chemistry term built on the name of the element sulfur, which traces back to the Latin sulfur (also spelled sulphur), meaning the yellow, burnable mineral that ancient writers called brimstone. The ending -ate is the standard chemical suffix used to name a salt or ester formed from an acid, in this case sulfuric acid; it descends from the Latin participle ending -atus, used to mark something acted upon or formed. The exact word entered English in the late 1700s through French chemists who coined sulfate (and the parallel form sulphate) as the modern science of naming compounds took shape. The spelling with f rather than ph reflects the classical Latin sulfur and is now the form recommended internationally by chemists, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, which is why it appears in technical writing across Britain, North America, and beyond. The trap for writers is the unstressed second syllable, where the vague schwa sound gives no clue whether to write 'sul-fate' or the older 'sul-phate'.

How the word is built

• sulf- (sulfur, the element)
• -ate (chemistry suffix marking a salt or ester of an acid)

British and American spelling

Sulfate is the American spelling. British English spells it sulphate.