Tautomerize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To undergo a chemical process where a compound rearranges its structure to form a tautomer, shifting a proton and a double bond within the molecule for isomerization
2. To change by internal repositioning of atoms leading to a different tautomeric form, involving migration of a proton and rearrangement of bonding electrons in a compound
3. To convert between two isomeric structures of a molecule via proton transfer and bond shift, resulting in distinct but readily interconvertible forms known as tautomers

Etymology: "Tautomerize" is a plain technical formation: it combines "tautomer" with the suffix "-ize", which turns a noun into a verb meaning "to convert into" or "to make into" the thing named. So to tautomerize a molecule is to convert it into its tautomer. The base noun "tautomer" is itself a chemical coinage, built from Greek roots, and the word belongs to the vocabulary of 19th- and 20th-century organic chemistry rather than ancient usage. The suffix does the real work here. "-ize" entered English through Latin and Greek and has long been attached to nouns and adjectives to form verbs of transformation, such as "crystallize" or "polymerize." Chemists adopted it freely because it lets a single word describe a whole process, the way "isomerize" describes the change from one isomer to another. The verb therefore carries the same logic as its parent noun: the molecule changes from one tautomeric form into another, and the change is a reversible shift of a proton and a double bond rather than a break in the molecule's structure.

Synonyms: isomerize, resonate