Chem. Formerly -yle. [f. L. am(ylum) starch + -YL(E = Gr. ὔλη matter, stuff, substance. So named, because its alcohol was first obtained from the Fusel oil separated in purifying or ‘rectifying’ ordinary spirits distilled from potato or grain starch. The name was not appropriate, as Fusel oil occurs in unrectified spirit of wine from any source (as from the grape or from sugar), and yields propyl, and butyl, as well as amyl alcohol: and it was unfortunate as seeming to connect this radical with the Amyloses and Amylaceous substances.]
The monatomic alcohol radical of the pentacarbon series C5H11, also called Pentyl or Quintyl.
(There are eight isomeric modifications of PENTYL, of which Amyl proper is the second = Isopentyl, CH . 2 CH3 . C2H4.)
1850. Daubeny, Atom. The., vii. 227. We regard this [fusel oil] as the alcohol of the supposed radical … assigning to it the name of Amyle.
1870. Daily News, 16 Sept., 2/2. Professor Humphry, of Cambridge, looked forward to nitrate of amyle becoming a cure for those horrible afflictions lockjaw and hydrophobia.
1870. Tyndall, Heat, xv. § 745. The light of the sun also effects the decomposition of the nitrite of amyl vapour.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, I. 522. Acetate of amyl, commercially known as jargonelle pear essence.
2. attrib. = of amyl, amylic: as in amyl compounds, series, group; also amyl acetate, chloride, oxide, sulphide, etc.; and esp. in Amyl alcohol, also called Isopentyl alcohol, and Isobutyl carbinol, CH . 2CH3 . (C2H4) OH, a burning acrid oily liquid of fetid odor, the chief constituent of Fusel oil, produced along with vinic alcohol in the manufacture of brandy; Amyl hydride, another name for pentane; Ethyl-amyl-acetate, the essence of jargonelle pears.
1863. Watts, Dict. Chem. (1872), I. 203. Amyl alcohol is difficult to set on fire, and burns with a white smoky flame. Ibid. (1872), VI. 107. The amyl-compounds obtained from fusel-oil.
3. As formative in names of compounds containing amyl: as amylacetate, amylacetic, amylaniline, amyl-arsine, amyl-phosphine.
1850. Daubeny, Atom. The., viii. 240. Amylaniline, a similar compound, into which amyle, as well as aniline, appears to enter, its composition being C12H5 . C10H11 . HN.
1863. Watts, Dict. Chem. (1872), I. 205. Sulphide of Amyl and Hydrogen: Amyl-mercaptan.
