A polymer is produced when lots of monomers bond together. Monomer has Greek roots, mono meaning one and mer meaning parts. Polymer also has Greek roots, poly meaning many and mer meaning parts.
So we can form a verb that means to produce a molecule of many parts. Because the words monomer and polymer have Greek roots, we should use the "ize" suffix, that is, polymerize. Yet, particularly in Australia, the Latin "ise" suffix is used to produce the verb polymerise.
The word, polymerise, would have a Greek root (poly, many), a French root (mer, sea), and a latin suffix (ise). This would appear to suggest that to polymerise would be to make many seas. On the other hand, a monomer would be just one sea.
Merde!
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