Alkaliphiles

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Organisms that thrive in alkaline environments, where the pH is higher than 9
2. species that adapt to live optimally in basic conditions, often found in soda lakes or alkaline soils
3. life forms exhibiting traits that enable survival and growth in highly alkaline habitats, frequently related to unique biochemical processes

Etymology: "Alkaliphiles" is the plural of "alkaliphile", a noun for organisms that thrive in highly alkaline conditions. The word is built from two parts with very different histories. The first, "alkali", comes from Arabic "al-qily", a term for the ashes of saltwort plants, which were burned to produce a substance rich in sodium carbonate. Medieval Latin borrowed the Arabic as "alcali", and it passed through French into English, where "alkali" eventually came to mean any base that dissolves in water. The second part, "-phile", comes from Ancient Greek "phílos", meaning "loving" or "friend", and reached English through Latin "-philus". It appears in many modern compounds, such as "bibliophile", and the scientific term "alkaliphile" joins it to "alkali" in the same way. Because the combination was made from these parts rather than inherited from antiquity, it describes a modern concept: microbes that prefer environments with a pH well above neutral.