diethyl ether
"diethyl-ether" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“diethyl ether” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A clear, colorless, highly flammable liquid with a low boiling point and chemical formula CH₃-CH₂-O-CH₂-CH₃. Used as a solvent and in the past as a general anesthetic.
Corpus desk
Index EN-diethyl-ether · diethyl ether · English
diethyl ether · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "D" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | diethyl ether |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “diethyl ether” in English
Rare enough to double-check
diethyl ether is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A clear, colorless, highly flammable liquid with a low boiling point and chemical formula CH₃-CH₂-O-CH₂-CH₃. Used as a solvent and in the past as a general anesthetic.".
No misspelling variants are generated for diethyl ether in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is diethyl ether, spelled D-I-E-T-H-Y-L- -E-T-H-E-R.
Definition
- 1A clear, colorless, highly flammable liquid with a low boiling point and chemical formula CH₃-CH₂-O-CH₂-CH₃. Used as a solvent and in the past as a general anesthetic.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how diethyl ether appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Volatiles of kecap manis and its raw materials were extracted using Likens-Nickerson apparatus with diethyl ether as the extraction solvent. The extracts were then dried with anhydrous sodium sulfate, concentrated using a rotary evaporator followed by flushing using nitrogen until the volume was about 0.5 ml.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.