What does "hydrolysis" mean?

A chemical process of decomposition involving the splitting of a bond and the addition of the hydrogen cation and the hydroxide anion of water.

What is a synonym for "hydrolysis"?

Common synonyms include: catalysis, catalyst, decay, dissociation, fission, splitting.

Pronounced //haɪˈdɹɑləsəs//.

//haɪˈdɹɑləsəs// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A chemical process of decomposition involving the splitting of a bond and the addition of the hydrogen cation and the hydroxide anion of water. countable, uncountable
2
a chemical reaction in which water reacts with a compound to produce other compounds; involves the splitting of a bond and the addition of the hydrogen cation and the hydroxide anion from the water wordnet

From hydro- + -lysis.

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