Salicyl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The chemical radical derived from salicylic acid, forming the basis of many aspirin-related and analgesic compounds
2. A univalent organic group obtained from salicylic acid by removing its hydroxyl hydrogen, found in various pharmaceutical substances
3. The acyl radical of salicylic acid, a component that appears in numerous medicinal and chemical compounds

Etymology: Salicyl is the name of a chemical radical, the group of atoms C7H5O2 found in salicylic acid, and it comes from the willow. The Latin "salix" meant willow, and in 1832 the German chemists Friedrich Wöhler and Justus von Liebig were studying oil of bitter almonds and the related compounds that gave them their scent. Their coinage built the new name from the older chemical term "salicin," which had been isolated from willow bark, and the suffix "-yl," which Liebig and Wöhler had introduced in that same period to mark a stable group of atoms that passes unchanged through a series of reactions. The result was a name that tracks a chain of discovery. Salicin, the bitter glycoside first obtained from willow bark, gave salicylic acid, and salicylic acid gave the salicyl group. Chemists used the word as a building block for the names of related compounds, so the willow's name is preserved in every salicyl derivative.