Cetane

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A hydrocarbon molecule that serves as a vital reference for gauging the ignition performance of diesel fuels under compression conditions
2. A specific hydrocarbon regarded for its role in assessing the ignition properties of diesel fuels under compression conditions
3. A hydrocarbon compound utilized to determine the ignition timing characteristics of diesel engines

Etymology: Cetane is a technical coinage, named after the whale. The Latin "cetus" meant "whale" (and more broadly any large sea creature), and it gave chemists a convenient stem for the compound. The name comes from the substance's origin in whale-derived materials: the hydrocarbon hexadecane was first isolated from sperm whale oil, which was the source of the "cetyl" group that the chemical name builds on. The ending "-ane" is the standard chemical suffix marking a saturated hydrocarbon, the same ending found in methane, ethane and propane. Joining the two gives a name that is part biological, part systematic. Chemists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were naming newly identified molecules this way, so the word is a product of laboratory naming rather than of everyday speech.