Toluid

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical compound formed by combining toluidine, an aromatic amine related to toluene, with another substance
2. An organic compound built from a toluidine base, a derivative of the aromatic amine obtained from toluene
3. A substance classed as a toluidine derivative, produced by chemically modifying the aromatic amine structure of toluene

Etymology: Its story begins with a Colombian port. Tolu balsam, a fragrant resin, takes its name from Santiago de Tolú, a town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia from which the balsam was shipped to Europe. Chemists who distilled a hydrocarbon from the balsam named it toluene, and this compound is built on that parent. The ending is the more surprising part. "-idine" comes from aniline, a substance first obtained from indigo. Aniline's name runs back through Portuguese "anil" to Arabic "al-nil" and Sanskrit "nila," meaning dark blue. Chemists adopted the ending for a family of nitrogen compounds, so toluidine denotes a toluene-derived amine. The shorter form "toluid" is most likely a clipped variant of that name used in chemical naming.