Diphenylmethyl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical radical made of a central carbon atom bonded to a hydrogen and two phenyl rings, found in many organic compounds
2. The univalent organic group consisting of two benzene rings attached to a single methylene carbon, used in chemical synthesis
3. An organic substituent formed when diphenylmethane loses one hydrogen atom, commonly encountered in pharmaceutical and industrial chemistry

Etymology: Diphenylmethyl is a chemist's coinage built from three parts, none of them mysterious. "Phenyl" is the name for the C6H5 ring of carbon atoms, a term formed in the 1830s from "phene," an old name for benzene, and the suffix "-yl," which chemists began attaching to radical groups in the 1830s. "Di-" is the Greek prefix for two, and "methyl" is the one-carbon group CH3, a name built from the Greek "methy," meaning wine, plus "hyle," wood or matter, because it was first isolated from wood alcohol. Joined together, the word describes a CH group carrying two phenyl rings, the kind of structure found in benzhydryl compounds. Because the name follows the systematic rules of organic chemistry, it was not coined by any single person or in any single event. Its parts date from the nineteenth century, when chemists began naming molecular fragments in a regular way, and the full compound name appeared once such structures were being studied.