Tertiary alcohols

In chemistry, an alcohol is any organic compound in which the hydroxyl functional group (–OH) is bound to a carbon. The term alcohol originally referred to the primary alcohol ethanol (ethyl alcohol), which is used as a drug and is the main alcohol present in alcoholic beverages. An important class of alcohols, of which methanol and ethanol are the simplest members, includes all compounds for which the general formula is CnH2n+1OH. It is these simple monoalcohols that are the subject of this article. The suffix -ol appears in the IUPAC chemical name of all substances where the hydroxyl group is the functional group with the highest priority. When a higher priority group is present in the compound, the prefix hydroxy- is used in its IUPAC name. The suffix -ol in non-IUPAC names (such as paracetamol or cholesterol) also typically indicates that the substance is an alcohol. However, many substances that contain hydroxyl functional groups (particularly sugars, such as glucose and sucrose) have names which include neither the suffix -ol, nor the prefix hydroxy-. Alcohol distillation likely originated in India. During 2000 BCE, people of India used an alcoholic drink called Sura. Alcohol distillation was known to Islamic chemists as early as the eighth century. The Arab chemist, al-Kindi, unambiguously described the distillation of wine in a treatise titled as 'The Book of the chemistry of Perfume and Distillations'. The Persian physician, alchemist, polymath and philosopher Rhazes (854 CE – 925 CE) is credited with the discovery of ethanol. The word 'alcohol' is from the Arabic kohl (Arabic: الكحل‎, romanized: al-kuḥl), a powder used as an eyeliner. Al- is the Arabic definite article, equivalent to the in English. Alcohol was originally used for the very fine powder produced by the sublimation of the natural mineral stibnite to form antimony trisulfide Sb2S3. It was considered to be the essence or 'spirit' of this mineral. It was used as an antiseptic, eyeliner, and cosmetic. The meaning of alcohol was extended to distilled substances in general, and then narrowed to ethanol, when 'spirits' was a synonym for hard liquor. Bartholomew Traheron, in his 1543 translation of John of Vigo, introduces the word as a term used by 'barbarous' (Moorish) authors for 'fine powder.' Vigo wrote: 'the barbarous auctours use alcohol, or (as I fynde it sometymes wryten) alcofoll, for moost fine poudre.' The 1657 Lexicon Chymicum, by William Johnson glosses the word as 'antimonium sive stibium.' By extension, the word came to refer to any fluid obtained by distillation, including 'alcohol of wine,' the distilled essence of wine. Libavius in Alchymia (1594) refers to 'vini alcohol vel vinum alcalisatum'. Johnson (1657) glosses alcohol vini as 'quando omnis superfluitas vini a vino separatur, ita ut accensum ardeat donec totum consumatur, nihilque fæcum aut phlegmatis in fundo remaneat.' The word's meaning became restricted to 'spirit of wine' (the chemical known today as ethanol) in the 18th century and was extended to the class of substances so-called as 'alcohols' in modern chemistry after 1850.