Xanthates

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Chemical substances containing xanthate groups used primarily to separate minerals during ore processing
2. Compounds formed from alcohols and carbon disulfide that help in extracting valuable minerals in mining
3. Organosulfur chemicals applied in froth flotation to improve the recovery of metal ores from mined rock

Etymology: Xanthates are named for a colour. The Greek "xanthos" means "yellow" or "golden-brown," and chemists built the name by attaching the suffix "-ate," which in chemistry marks a salt or ester, to the stem "xanthe-" drawn from that Greek root. The result is a family of compounds whose name records a shade rather than a structure, so the word tells you nothing about what the substances do. The "-ate" ending carries a longer history. It descends from a Latin suffix "-atus," which was used to form adjectives and nouns, and passed into English as the standard label for salts of acids, such as sulphate and nitrate. Chemists then applied the same pattern to new compounds, so "xanthate" belongs to a systematic naming scheme rather than an older folk vocabulary. The plural "xanthates" simply refers to more than one such salt or ester. It is the form used when discussing the whole class, or several different members of it, in mining and chemistry texts.

Synonyms: xanthate salts, esters of xanthic acid