biphenyl
noun
biphenyl is a noun meaning “A colourless solid hydrocarbon, C₁₂H₁₀, consisting of two benzene rings linked together by a single bond” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-I-P-H-E-N-Y-L and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 24 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of biphenyl is biphenyls.
What does biphenyl mean?
noun
- 1
A colourless solid hydrocarbon, C₁₂H₁₀, consisting of two benzene rings linked together by a single bond.
- 2
Any substituted or otherwise altered version of biphenyl, such as PCBs.
halogenated biphenyls
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce biphenyl?
Biphenyl has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of biphenyl
- biphenyls plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is biphenyl?
Biphenyl appears about once in every 24 million words in written English, the 148,541st 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).
Biphenyl in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense organic compound:
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 biphenyl come from?
From bi- + phenyl.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).