Benzhydryl

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A chemical radical made of a carbon atom bonded to two phenyl rings, found in many organic compounds and pharmaceuticals
2. The divalent group with two benzene rings joined to one central carbon, used as a structural unit in organic chemistry
3. A substituent group in chemistry formed when two phenyl rings share a single carbon atom as their point of attachment

Etymology: Benzhydryl is a chemist's coinage, built from "benz-" and "hydryl" rather than from any everyday word. The "benz-" part comes from benzene and the benzoic acid family, whose name traces back to gum benzoin, a resin once traded from Southeast Asia. The "hydryl" part is a chemical term for a univalent radical containing a hydrogen atom, formed from "hydrogen" in the same way that words like "methyl" and "ethyl" were built on the model of "-yl" as a naming suffix for organic groups. Put together, benzhydryl names the group made of a central carbon atom bonded to two phenyl rings (benzene rings missing one hydrogen each) and one remaining hydrogen. Because it is a radical that chemists attach to larger molecules, the word is used mainly in pharmaceutical and organic chemistry writing. Its exact date of coinage is not recorded in the source, so the word's precise history beyond this construction is best left to specialist references.

Synonyms: diphenylmethyl