Titering

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Measuring how concentrated a solution is by gradually adding a reagent until a reaction is complete
2. Determining the strength of a liquid sample by carefully adding a known substance until a chemical endpoint is reached
3. Analyzing the concentration of a dissolved substance through a controlled process of incremental chemical addition

Etymology: "Titering" is the present participle of "titer," a verb meaning to determine the concentration of a substance in a solution by titration. The noun "titer" comes from French "titre," meaning a title or inscription, and that French word descends from Latin "titulus," a label or inscription. The same Latin root gave English "title," "tittle" (the dot over an i), "tilde," and "titlo" (the mark indicating an abbreviation), which makes "titer" a distant cousin of these words. The link between a label and a laboratory measurement runs through the idea of standing for a quantity. In French, "titre" came to mean the proportion of a precious metal in an alloy, a sense that suggests a stated grade or assured value. English borrowed that sense and applied it to chemistry, where a titer describes how strong a solution is, and the verb built from it describes the process of finding that strength.