a substance produced by adding one or more alkyl groups to a compound
transitive verb
2.
to add one or more alkyl groups to (a compound)
Word origin
[1885–90; alkyl + -ate1]This word is first recorded in the period 1885–90. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: booster, retread, sensitization, toner, twofer-ate is a suffix occurring in loanwords from Latin, its English distribution parallelingthat of Latin. The form originated as a suffix added to a- stem verbs to form adjectives (separate). The resulting form could also be used independently as a noun (advocate) and came to be used as a stem on which a verb could be formed (separate; advocate; agitate). In English the use as a verbal suffix has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin(calibrate; acierate)