Meanings
plural terephthalates
- chemistryAny salt or ester of terephthalic acid.
2 more examples
For eons, the debris has contained the same things — flecks from plant and animal carcasses, feces, mucus, dust, microbes, viruses — and transported the ocean’s carbon to be stored on the seafloor. Increasingly, however, marine snowfall is being infiltrated by microplastics: fibers and fragments of polyamide, polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate. And this fauxfall appears to be altering our planet’s ancient cooling process.
2022 April 3, Sabrina Imbler, “In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Apr 2022An effort was made to fit the flexible tube at least 3 mm deep onto the vasculature; (2) for the remaining systems, 3D-printed polyethylene terephthalate (PET) reservoir blocks were manufactured by PrintPlace using FDM technology. The additively manufactured PET reservoir blocks were previously applied and proven to effectively circulate the agent through the healing network [6].
2022 May 9, Eleni Tsangouri et al., “Reservoir-Vascular Tubes Network for Self-Healing Concrete: Performance Analysis by Acoustic Emission, Digital Image Correlation and Ultrasound Velocity”, in Applied Sciences, volume 12, number 10, →DOI, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2025
Origin
From terephthalic acid + -ate (“salt or ester”).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
French téréphtalate
- téréphtalateTranslations
Polish tereftalan
- tereftalanTranslations
Cite this entry
terephthalate. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terephthalate
“terephthalate.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terephthalate. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “terephthalate,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terephthalate.
Source: terephthalate on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.