sulfonium
noun
sulfonium is a noun meaning “the univalent H₃S⁺ cation, derived from sulfane” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-U-L-F-O-N-I-U-M, and it appears about once in every 76 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sulfonium is sulfoniums.
What does sulfonium mean?
noun
- 1
the univalent H₃S⁺ cation, derived from sulfane
- 2
any derivative of this cation in which one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by organic radicals
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of sulfonium
- sulfoniums plural
- sulphonium
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sulfonium?
Sulfonium appears about once in every 76 million words in written English, the 275,970th 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).
Where does sulfonium come from?
From sulfo- + onium.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).