Sulfuretting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Treating a substance by combining it with sulfur, or converting a material into a sulfide compound
2. Causing a material to take up sulfur through a chemical process that forms sulfur compounds within it
3. Introducing sulfur into a substance so that it reacts and becomes a sulfide or is otherwise chemically altered

Etymology: The verb "sulfuretting" is simply the present participle of "sulfuret," a chemical term for a compound of sulfur. Its history is a small story about translation: in 1788, the English translator James St. John rendered the French "sulfure" as "sulphuret," adapting it from Latin "sulphuretum," meaning something relating to sulphur. The translation came from the 1787 French work on chemical nomenclature by Morveau, Lavoisier and colleagues, which systematized how chemists named substances. The word's internal structure is plain. It combines "sulfur" with the suffix "-uret," a chemical element used to name compounds, so a "sulfuret" is a sulfur compound in the older naming system. To "sulfuret" something is to treat it with sulfur, and "sulfuretting" describes that ongoing action.