mercaptan
/mɚˈkæpt(ə)n/noun
mercaptan is a noun meaning “Any of a class of organic compounds of sulphur, ( R-SH ) where R represents an alkyl or other organic substituent. They tend to be foul-smelling.…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-R-C-A-P-T-A-N, and it appears about once in every 19 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of mercaptan is mercaptans.
What does mercaptan mean?
noun
- 1
Any of a class of organic compounds of sulphur, ( R-SH ) where R represents an alkyl or other organic substituent. They tend to be foul-smelling. They are also termed thiols or thioalcohols.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce mercaptan?
- UK /məˈkapt(ə)n/
- US /mɚˈkæpt(ə)n/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of mercaptan
- mercaptans plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is mercaptan?
Mercaptan appears about once in every 19 million words in written English, the 130,282nd 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).
Mercaptan in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense sulphuric compound:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | mercaptan |
| German | Mercaptan |
| Spanish | mercaptano |
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 mercaptan come from?
Borrowed from German Mercaptan, from Danish mercaptan; coined by organic chemist William Christopher Zeise in 1832 from mer(curius) (“mercury”) + captan(s) (“capturing”), because the thiolate group bonds very strongly with mercury compounds.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).