Quantivalence

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The combining power of an atom or radical, measured by how many other atoms it can bond with in a chemical compound
2. In chemistry, the number of bonds an element or group can form when it combines with other substances
3. A chemical property describing how many atomic bonds a given element or radical is able to establish with others

Etymology: Chemists once had a word for how many bonds an atom could form, and "quantivalence" was an early attempt at naming it. The term was coined by F. O. Ward, who passed it along to the German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann, and Hofmann's German "Quantivalenz" is the word from which the modern chemical term "valence" is derived. So the familiar short word descends from this longer coinage, not the other way round. The word is built from classical parts, not from anything ancient chemists used. Its first element is Latin "quantus", meaning "how much", and its second is Latin "valentia", meaning "bodily strength" or "vigour", a noun from the same stem that gives English "valiant". The "-i-" in the middle is an interfix, a linking vowel added for ease of pronunciation, and "-ence" is a suffix denoting a state or condition. Put together, the word roughly means "how much strength" or "how much power", a fitting image for the capacity of an atom to combine with others.