Perfluorinate

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. To treat a compound so that every hydrogen atom is swapped out for fluorine, producing a fully fluorinated substance
2. Replacing each hydrogen in a molecule with a fluorine atom until the entire structure carries only carbon-fluorine bonds
3. Converting an organic compound by substituting fluorine for all of its hydrogen atoms in a chemical process

Etymology: "Perfluorinate" is simply "fluorinate" with the prefix "per-", which in chemistry means that every available position on a molecule is occupied. "Fluorinate" means to introduce fluorine into a compound, and the prefix signals a complete substitution: in a perfluorinated compound, each hydrogen atom that could be replaced by fluorine has been. The prefix is the familiar Latin "per-", meaning "through" or "thoroughly," which chemists borrowed to express totality. The result is a word whose meaning comes almost entirely from its parts. Fluorine itself takes its name from fluorspar, the mineral from which it was first isolated, and its Latin-derived root, "fluere" ("to flow"), reflects the way that mineral was used as a flux in metalworking to make other substances melt more easily. The word therefore describes a chemical process that is thorough by design, built from a mineral name and a prefix meaning "through."

Synonyms: fluorinate