Sulfuret

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An outdated name for a sulfide, a chemical compound formed by combining sulfur with another element
2. A former term for a binary compound in which sulfur is chemically bonded to a metal or other element
3. An obsolete chemical name for a substance made of sulfur combined with another element, now called a sulfide

Etymology: The word was coined in 1788 by James St. John, the English translator of a landmark French chemistry book. The original was Méthode de nomenclature chimique, published in 1787 by Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier and their colleagues, who were reforming how chemists named substances. St. John rendered the French "sulfure" as "sulphuret," a term that had to describe compounds of sulfur with other elements in a systematic way. The raw material is Latin. "Sulphuretum" meant something relating to sulphur, and English took that stem and joined it to "-uret," a chemical ending that the French nomenclature reformers used to mark a binary compound of an element with another substance. Put together, the word told a chemist at once what kind of compound was in front of him. Modern chemists have largely dropped "sulphuret" in favour of "sulfide," the spelling and naming that replaced it, so the word now mostly appears in older texts.