Etymology

methylene

M3E1T1H4Y4L1E1N1E1

Today it means: The divalent group –CH₂– in which the free valencies are part of single bonds. Full definition →

French méthylène ← Ancient Greek μέθυ
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromμέθυ“wine”
  2. French · derived fromméthylène
  3. English todaymethylene

French méthylène, from Ancient Greek μέθυ (méthu, “wine”) + ὕλη (húlē, “wood”). By surface analysis, meth- + -ylene.

Words from the same roots

Frenchméthylène all →

-yl

Ancient Greekμέθυ all →

metho-methomania

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.