What does "chromatography" mean?

Any of various techniques for the qualitative or quantitative separation of the components of mixtures of compounds; all characterized by the use of a mobile phase (gas or liquid) moving relative to a stationary phase (liquid or solid) – the differences between the rates of migration of the compounds between the two phases affect the separation.

What is a synonym for "chromatography"?

Common synonyms include: spectrometry, spectroscopy.

How do you pronounce "chromatography"?

Pronounced //ˌkɹəʊ.məˈtɒɡɹə.fi//.

Chromatography

//ˌkɹəʊ.məˈtɒɡɹə.fi// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any of various techniques for the qualitative or quantitative separation of the components of mixtures of compounds; all characterized by the use of a mobile phase (gas or liquid) moving relative to a stationary phase (liquid or solid) – the differences between the rates of migration of the compounds between the two phases affect the separation. countable, uncountable
2
a process used for separating mixtures by virtue of differences in absorbency wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

spectrometry spectroscopy

Etymology

Back-formation from chromatographic, borrowed from German chromatographisch (see there for more); by surface analysis, chromato- + -graphy. The technique is so named because it was developed primarily for the separation of the plant pigments, which would separate in bands of different "colors" (chromato-) .

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