Other forms: chemistries
Chemistry is the science of what things are made of and what happens when you mix them. Test tubes in a wooden rack, a burner turning the flame blue, the periodic table on the wall behind the teacher.
At school it is the lesson with goggles and small controlled explosions; at university it is a degree; in a factory it is the reason the paint dries. The word also covers the make-up of one particular thing — the chemistry of the soil, the chemistry of the blood. Then there is the human sense: two actors have chemistry when you believe them together on screen, and a couple with no chemistry have nothing running between them. That sense takes no article and no plural — they have chemistry, never a chemistry. A chemist is the person who does the science, and in Britain the chemist is also the shop where you buy aspirin.
1nounchemistryThe science of substances, what they are made of and how they react and change; the school or university subject that teaches it.~86%
“She dropped physics after a term but kept chemistry.”
2nounchemicalThe chemical make-up and behaviour of a particular substance or body.~12%
“Weeks of rain had changed the chemistry of the pond.”
3nounrapportA natural attraction or easy understanding between people.~2%
“The two leads had no chemistry and the film died on screen.”
synonyms: rapport, spark
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
chemistry is a science.
The word was coined around 1605, chemist plus -ry. Chemist came through Latin alchimista from Arabic كيمياء, where the al- at the front is simply the Arabic word for 'the'. Behind that stands Greek χυμεία, from χύμα, 'fluid', and χυμός, 'juice', from χέω, 'to pour'. Chemistry began as the art of pouring liquids into one another.
Built from
From chemist + -ry. First coined 1605, from chemist + ry. From chemist, chymist, from alchimista, from كيمياء, from article اَل + χυμεία, from χύμα (“fluid”), from χυμός (“juice”), from χέω (“to pour”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA