Chiral

//ˈkaɪɹəl// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    that exhibits chirality; as in the left-handed and right-handed versions of a helix, or a molecule with L- and D- stereoisomers. not-comparable, physical

    "In the close vicinity of a chiral nanostructure, the circular dichroism of a biomolecule could be greatly enhanced, due to the interaction with the local superchiral fields."

Synonyms

All synonyms
handed

Example

More examples

"Chirality or chiral describes a nonsuperimposable mirror image, like left and right hands. Usually in chemistry the term is used to describe a pair of molecules that have the same formulas, but form a pair of structures."

Etymology

From Ancient Greek χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + -al.

Related phrases

chiral centerchiral centrechiral resolution

More for "chiral"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.