Polyreaction

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A series of chemical reactions involving multiple reactants to produce various products
2. a process that allows for the simultaneous transformation of different substances
3. an interaction mechanism wherein several reactive species participate to form new compounds

Etymology: "Polyreaction" is a plain technical compound, built from the prefix "poly-" and the familiar word "reaction." The prefix comes from Ancient Greek "polús," meaning "much" or "many," a form that traces back to the same ancient Indo-European root that gave Greek and many other languages their words for "much." In chemistry, "poly-" has long been attached to terms to signal multiplicity, so a polyreaction is one in which several chemical reactions occur together or in sequence. The word "reaction" itself comes from the Latin "reactio," from "re-" (back) and "actio" (action), and in chemistry it refers to a process in which substances interact and change. Joining the two gives a term that needs no special story: it names a set of reactions as a single process. The word is a modern coinage of the kind chemists create whenever they need a precise label, and it is best understood as a straightforward combination of its parts rather than as a word with a notable history of its own.

Synonyms: polymerization, multi-reaction