What functional group resembles a hydroxyl group?

1 Answer
Jun 8, 2016

You may be asking about sulfhydryl groups (SH), which resemble a hydroxyl group (OH), so compounds that only contain SH as a unique functional group are named based off of the original alcohol.

NOTE: Entire compounds are not functional groups; ethanol cannot be a functional group, because it is a complete, defined compound.

However, OH is a molecular fragment and is called a functional group.


Normally alcohols have IUPAC names ending in "-ol", and have prefixes based off of the original alkane (e.g. Ethanol).

CH3CH2SH, or ethanethiol, is the sulfur analog of CH3CH2OH (ethanol). Ethanethiol is a thiol, while ethanol is a regular alcohol.

A simple way to name the sulfur analog of an alcohol, if the alcohol exists, is to simply add "thi" before "-ol" and utilize the entire name of the would-be alkane instead of omitting the vowel before the suffix.

Ethanol Ethanethiol