Xylidide

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical compound of the amide class formed from xylidine, an aromatic amine related to aniline
2. An organic amide substance produced by combining xylidine with an acid, used in chemical synthesis
3. A nitrogen-containing organic compound belonging to the amide family, made from a xylidine base

Etymology: Xylidide is a chemical coinage rather than a word with an ancient pedigree. It is built from "xylidine", the name for a group of dimethylanilines (compounds derived from benzene and related to aniline, the substance first obtained from indigo). "Xylidine" itself combines "xyl-", from Greek "xylon" meaning "wood", with "-idine", a suffix chemists used for nitrogen-containing bases. The link to wood is a historical accident: the first xylidines were prepared from xylene, a hydrocarbon that was originally isolated from wood tar distilled during the 19th century. The "-ide" ending marks an amide, a compound in which a nitrogen atom is bonded to a carbonyl group (a carbon double-bonded to oxygen). Xylidide therefore names a substance formed by joining a xylidine-derived amine to an acyl group, following the same naming logic chemists used for related compounds such as acetanilide. The word belongs to the systematic naming habit of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when organic chemistry was rapidly producing families of named derivatives, and it has no earlier history in English.