Etymology

mercaptan

M3E1R1C3A1P3T1A1N1

Today it means: 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. Full definition →

German Mercaptan ← Danish mercaptan
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The story

  1. Danish · derived frommercaptan
  2. German · borrowed fromMercaptan
  3. English todaymercaptan

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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.