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. \mathbf("Ethan")"ol").

"CH"_3"CH"_2"SH", or ethanethiol, is the sulfur analog of "CH"_3"CH"_2"OH" (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.

"Ethan"\mathbf("ol") -> "Ethan"\mathbf("ethiol")