In chemistry, the
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
-al is the
IUPAC nomenclature
IUPAC nomenclature is a set of recommendations for naming chemical compounds and for describing chemistry and biochemistry in general. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is the international authority on chemical nomenc ...
used in
organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...
to form names of
aldehyde
In organic chemistry, an aldehyde () (lat. ''al''cohol ''dehyd''rogenatum, dehydrogenated alcohol) is an organic compound containing a functional group with the structure . The functional group itself (without the "R" side chain) can be referred ...
s containing the -(CO)H group in the systematic form. It was extracted from the word "aldehyde". With the exception of chemical compounds having a higher priority than it, all aldehydes are named using -al, such as 'propanal'. Some aldehydes also have common names, such as
formaldehyde
Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is an organic compound with the chemical formula and structure , more precisely . The compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde. It is stored as ...
for methanal, acetaldehyde for ethanal. Benzaldehyde does not have a systematic form with -al.
References
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{{Orgchemsuffixes
al