chlorine
chlo·rine/ˈklɔɹin/noun
chlorine is a noun meaning “A toxic, green, gaseous chemical element (symbol Cl) with an atomic number of 17” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-L-O-R-I-N-E and has 2 syllables (chlo·rine), and it appears 2.7 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chlorine is chlorines.
What does chlorine mean?
noun
- 1
A toxic, green, gaseous chemical element (symbol Cl) with an atomic number of 17.
- 2
A single atom of this element.
- 3
A chlorine-based bleach or disinfectant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chlorine?
- US /ˈklɔɹin/
- UK /ˈklɔːɹiːn/
Chlorine has 2 syllables, split chlo·rine in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-chlorine.wav, En-us-chlorine.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-chlorine.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of chlorine
- chlorines plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chlorine?
Chlorine appears 2.7 times per million words in written English, the 16,455th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Chlorine in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense chemical element:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does chlorine come from?
Coined by British chemist Humphry Davy in 1810 from Ancient Greek χλωρός (khlōrós, “pale green”) + -ine.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).