Etymology

chromatography

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Today it means: Any of various techniques for the qualitative or quantitative separation of the components of mixtures of compounds; all characterized by the use of a mobile phase (gas or liquid) moving relative to a stationary phase (liquid or solid) – the differences between the rates of migration of the compounds between the two phases affect the separation. Full definition →

German chromatographisch
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The story

  1. German · borrowed fromchromatographisch
  2. English todaychromatography

Back-formation from chromatographic, borrowed from German chromatographisch (see there for more); by surface analysis, chromato- + -graphy. The technique is so named because it was developed primarily for the separation of the plant pigments, which would separate in bands of different "colors" (chromato-) .

Words from the same roots

Germanchromatographisch all →

chromatographic

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.