Covalent

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /kəʊˈveɪ.lənt/

Definitions

1. A type of chemical bond formed when two atoms share one or more pairs of electrons to achieve stability
2. A bond that occurs when two atoms mutually share pairs of electrons in order to attain a more stable electron configuration
3. A chemical linkage formed by the sharing of one or more pairs of electrons between two atoms to achieve stability

Etymology: "Covalent" is a technical coinage built from two existing pieces: the prefix "co-", meaning "together" or "jointly," and "valent," from the Latin "valens," meaning "strong" or "having power." The "valent" element comes from the same Latin verb "valere" ("to be strong, to be worth") that gives English words like "valiant" and "value." In chemistry, "valence" was used to describe how many bonds an atom could form, so a "valent" atom was one with a certain capacity for combining. Put together, "covalent" describes two atoms each contributing their combining power to a shared pair of electrons. The word is a modern scientific formation, not an ancient one: it was built from Latin parts to name a bond type that chemists had to describe once they understood electron sharing. Its ancestry runs back through Latin "con-" and "co-" to Proto-Italic and further, but in English it is a deliberate compound of "co-" and "valent."