chemicals
- 1Plural of chemical.
Industrial chemicals must be labeled clearly before shipment.
The lab tested several chemicals for purity.
Note
The -s belongs only to the noun, and it carries every noun meaning of chemical: the chemist's element, compound or alloy, the everyday sense of something artificial, and the slang sense of an addictive drug. The adjective has no plural. Whether it means "of chemistry" or "not found in nature", it stays unchanged before a plural noun, as in chemical reactions, never chemicals reactions.
- 2The chemical-manufacturing sector taken as a whole, treated as a single field of business and investment.
Chemicals led the market rally as factory orders climbed.
She covers chemicals and pharmaceuticals for a financial newspaper.
Note
Here the name of a product becomes the name of a business. The plural of the ordinary substances stands for the whole sector that makes them. In market and trade reporting it is treated as one thing and takes a singular verb (chemicals was the strongest sector). It sits naturally beside other sector names built the same way, such as pharmaceuticals.
chemicals is a form of chemical
chemical, noun: Any specific element, compound, or alloy regarded as a distinct substance. Full entry
- Forms
- chemicalchemicals plural
- Spelling
- chemical → chemicals: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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