Chromatography Forum

Dear Chrom Team:
There is an abundance of jargon associated with our professional field of chromatography. What are some of the jargoned phrases you use? And, what do these jargons mean in the proper sense?
I will start:
Jargon="the peak is shark-finning"
Meaning = peak reflects that the column is over-loaded with analyte.

Jargon= "allow time and temp for the analytes to "re-focus".
Meaning = the analytes are not in a focus group nor do they have a hard time concentrating on the task at hand, but once injected they need a lower temp to allow adsorptivity onto the stationary phase.

Any jargon in your chrom talk?

Jargon="schwag"
Meaning = anything coming from or related to the sample matrix that through the process of sample preparation is either removed or not removed sufficiently prior to injection on a chromatographic system.

I do enjoy the term "CRUD" - "Chromatographically Retained Undesirable Debris", coined elsewhere (Tom Jupille?)

"Fully Equilibrated" is one of my favorites, and I use it often to explain why it takes my HPLCs more than a few hours to go from being shut off at 19 C during a cold weekend to their typical 30 C column temperature operating parameters on a busy Monday morning...

old favorites

the peak is tailing (forked or curly?)

the peak is bearding (time for a new razor?)

the chromatogram is a grassy knoll (any lawn mower handy?)

the peak is a ghost peak (did the white sheet give it away?)

the column is bleeding (band-aid anyone?)

is the column a PLOT, a SCOT, a WCOT, or a FSOT? (third world countries?)

Is the column packed or micropacked? (suitcase or only a carry-on?)

Rod George

I don't use any of those, haven't even heard most of them.

Ok, how about "chromatography" itself (how many people know that the inventor, Mikhail Tswett, named it after himself?).

Or "plates" (as a neophyte many years ago I mis-translated that into the French equivalent of "dishes" ).

Multidimensional, that is, two dimensional, three dimensional, etc., actually makes sense only for TLC. For other chromatographies a more correct statement would be "two step", "three step" . . . .

Ok, how about "chromatography" itself (how many people know that the inventor, Mikhail Tswett, named it after himself?).

Is that confirmed?. I recall that Ettre's article gave it as a possibility, but given the colour of the chlorophyll fractions....

http://chromatographyonline.findanalyti ... rticle.pdf

" The word chromatography is composed of two Greek roots, chroma (color) and graphein (to write), and its verbatim translation means “color writing,â€

Interesting etymology description there--hmmm

What, no C/S CDS related jargon?
Am I the only one battling winsock, fatal comm, server and instrument failures and errors around here?

There are few confusing ones:

Unknown analysis: "novel compound" or " only unknown to you" analysis?
Non-target analysis: call it this way as long as you use full scan?
GC-MS based metabolomics: how about MRM-based, LC-UV based metabolomics?