Saponifiers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Chemical agents that bring about saponification, turning fats and oils into soap through reaction with an alkali
2. Substances such as alkalis that cause fats to break down and form soap when they react with them
3. Materials capable of transforming animal or vegetable oils into soap by chemically reacting with them under heat or pressure

Etymology: Saponifiers are the plural of "saponifier", a noun for any agent that turns fats or oils into soap. The word is built from "saponify", which combines Latin "sapo", meaning soap, with the Latin-derived verbal ending "-fy", meaning to make or turn into, and the agent suffix "-er" marks the thing doing the action. Put together, a saponifier is literally something that makes soap. The most familiar saponifiers are alkalis such as sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide, which break the chemical bonds in fat molecules and release the fatty acids that combine with the metal to form soap. In that sense the word names a chemical role rather than a single substance, so chemists use it for any reagent that performs the reaction.