terephthalate

[ ter-ef-thal-eyt, -it, tuh-ref-thuh-leyt ]

noun

, Chemistry.

1. a salt or ester of terephthalic acid.

Word History and Origins

Origin of terephthalate¹

First recorded in 1865–70; terephthal(ic acid) + -ate ²

Example Sentences

When squeezed to about a million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure and heated to thousands of degrees Celsius, polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, forms nanodiamonds, physicist Dominik Kraus and colleagues report September 2 in Science Advances.

From Science News