Bisulfuric

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Of or relating to bisulfate compounds or to sulfuric acid in a chemical sense
2. Describing a substance connected with sulfuric acid or with a bisulfate salt
3. Pertaining to chemical compounds that combine sulfuric acid with a bisulfate group

Etymology: "Bisulfuric" is a chemist's coinage built from two parts that each describe a chemical relationship. "Sulfuric" comes from "sulphur," the yellow element whose name goes back to Latin "sulphur," with the "-ic" ending marking an acid in which the element has its higher combining power. The prefix "bi-" means "two," and in chemical naming it signals a compound containing two parts of the base unit. Put together, the word describes a sulfuric acid in which the acid's hydrogen has been partly replaced, leaving one hydrogen behind, so the acid carries a "hydrogen sulfate" structure. This is why the word is almost always used in a more specific sense than its parts suggest. Chemists often call the compound "bisulfate" as an ion, and "bisulfuric acid" is the name for the same substance written in the older acid-naming style. The name is systematic rather than historical, so it has no folk story behind it and is simply a product of nineteenth-century chemical nomenclature, when naming rules built new words from Greek and Latin roots.

Synonyms: disulfuric, pyrosulfuric