Chlorinate

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈklɒ.ɹɪ.neɪt/

Definitions

1. To treat or combine a substance with chlorine, typically to disinfect or purify it
2. To introduce chlorine into a material or mixture in order to cleanse or sterilize
3. To apply chlorine chemicals to water or other substances for sanitation purposes

Etymology: Chlorinate is a chemistry word built in the modern laboratory from a much older Greek adjective. The root is "khlōrós", Ancient Greek for "pale green" or "greenish-yellow", the colour of young leaves and of fear-struck faces. Chlorine itself took its name from that colour: the gas, first isolated in the 1770s, was a greenish-yellow vapour, and in 1810 Humphry Davy named the element after it. Chlorine's name was an 19th-century coinage that gave us the broader vocabulary of the chemists' workshop. Chlorinate adds the suffix "-ate", a standard chemical ending for forming verbs meaning "to treat with" or "to combine with" a substance. So to chlorinate water is to treat it with chlorine, and the verb carries the chemist's habit of naming an action after the element it introduces. The same pattern gives us fluorinate, bromate and many others. Its use is practical rather than poetic: the word describes the everyday work of making drinking water and swimming pools safe. The pale colour of the original gas is now largely forgotten, but the word still points back to it.

Synonyms: disinfect, purify, sanitize, cleanse, sterilize