Siliconates

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Compounds formed by the reaction of silicon with alkaline substances, commonly used as water repellents or binders in construction materials
2. Chemical substances derived from silicon that interact with alkalis to produce materials often applied for sealing or protective coatings
3. Materials consisting of silicon combined with alkaline elements, utilized primarily for their adhesive and waterproofing properties in industrial applications

Etymology: Silicon itself was named in 1817 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson, who coined it from the Latin "silex" (flint) with the "-on" ending borrowed from "boron" and "carbon". Thomson was working from the same element that Humphry Davy had earlier tried to isolate and called "silicium", but Thomson's name was the one that stuck in English. Silicon also gives us the chemical suffix "-ate" in the way chemists used it to name salts of acids, so the word is a layered coinage rather than a single inherited term. Siliconates belong to a 20th-century family of compounds: they are salts or esters of silicon-containing acids, formed by combining silicon with organic groups and oxygen. The word follows the standard pattern of chemical nomenclature, with "silicon" plus the "-ate" suffix marking a salt or ester, and it was built during the period when chemists were systematically naming the growing range of silicon compounds, drawing on the older naming conventions for acids and their salts.

Synonyms: silicates, silicon compounds