Beeblerox, speaking of dihydrogen monoxide and cancer, did you know that it’s been proven that ALL cancer patients have a lifelong history of regularly ingesting DHMO?
Scary stuff :rolleyes:
Good point. Sometimes I have too much faith in the intelligece of my fellow human beings. Makes me wonder if I freaked out any of the undergrads when I taped the MSDS to the distilled H[sub]2[/sub]O tank when I ran a lab a few years back. 
Anyhow, one of the reasons I posted it was that bordelond was wondering what chemical name to use, and the site uses “dihydrogen monoxide”, “hydrogen hydroxide”, “dihydrogenoxide”, and “oxygendihydride”. AFAIK, there is no “official” name.
Jeez, can’t anybody read a freakin’ dictionary?
Per-, in both the chemical sense and the literary sense (perfervid), means “through, throughout, thoroughly”; it comes from the Latin preposition per, also meaning “through.”
It has nothing to do with the Greek hyper, which means “over.”
The “per” which means “each” dates back to 1899, and is unclear in its derivatoion, though it’s probably derived from the earlier per.
BTW, the chemical explanations here are essentially correct.
How about “hydroxylic acid”?