Enthalpy
//ˈɛn.θəl.piː// noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A measure of the heat content of a chemical or physical system. countable, physical, uncountable
"H=U+pV, where H is enthalpy, U is internal energy, p is pressure, and V is volume."
- 2 (thermodynamics) a thermodynamic quantity equal to the internal energy of a system plus the product of its volume and pressure wordnet
Example
More examples"Trying to determine enthalpy simply from a chemical equation is difficult."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἐν- (en-, “in”) + θάλπω (thálpō, “to warm”). Coined by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, but first used in print by J. P. Dalton in 1909 in a paper titled "Researches on the Joule-Kelvin-effect, especially at low temperatures".
Related phrases
More for "enthalpy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.