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• ion
  ion

  noun

  an electrically charged atom or group of atoms formed by the loss or gain of one or more electrons, as a cation positive ion, which is created by electron loss and is attracted to the cathode in electrolysis, or as an anion negative ion, which is created by an electron gain and is attracted to the anode. The valence of an ion is equal to the number of electrons lost or gained and is indicated by a plus sign for cations and a minus sign for anions, thus: Na + , Cl−, Ca ++ , S = .
• Ion
  Ion

  noun

  the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians: a son of Apollo and Creusa who is abandoned by his mother but returns to become an attendant in Apollo's temple at Delphi.
• -ion
  -ion

  a suffix, appearing in words of Latin origin, denoting action or condition, used in Latin and in English to form nouns from stems of Latin adjectives (communion; union ), verbs (legion; opinion ), and especially past participles (allusion; creation; fusion; notion; torsion ).
• Ion.
  Ion.

  abbreviation

  Ionic.

SEE ALSO:

Slang dictionary results for ion.

ion

¹ American  

[ahy-uhn, ahy-on] / ˈaɪ ən, ˈaɪ ɒn /

noun

Physics, Chemistry.

• ions
  plural

1. an electrically charged atom or group of atoms formed by the loss or gain of one or more electrons, as a cation positive ion, which is created by electron loss and is attracted to the cathode in electrolysis, or as an anion negative ion, which is created by an electron gain and is attracted to the anode. The valence of an ion is equal to the number of electrons lost or gained and is indicated by a plus sign for cations and a minus sign for anions, thus: Na + , Cl−, Ca ++ , S = .

2. one of the electrically charged particles formed in a gas by electric discharge or the like.

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Ion ² American  

[ahy-on] / ˈaɪ ɒn /

noun

1. Classical Mythology. the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians: a son of Apollo and Creusa who is abandoned by his mother but returns to become an attendant in Apollo's temple at Delphi.

2. (italics) a drama on this subject (415? b.c.) by Euripides.

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-ion ³ American  

1. a suffix, appearing in words of Latin origin, denoting action or condition, used in Latin and in English to form nouns from stems of Latin adjectives (communion; union ), verbs (legion; opinion ), and especially past participles (allusion; creation; fusion; notion; torsion ).

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Ion. ⁴ American  

abbreviation

1. Ionic.

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ion ¹ British  

/ ˈaɪən, -ɒn /

noun

1. an electrically charged atom or group of atoms formed by the loss or gain of one or more electrons See also cation anion

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-ion ² British  

suffix

1. indicating an action, process, or state Compare -ation -tion

   creation

   objection

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ion Scientific  

/ ī′ən,ī′ŏn′ /

1. An atom or a group of atoms that has an electric charge. Positive ions, or cations, are formed by the loss of electrons; negative ions, or anions, are formed by the gain of electrons.

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ion Cultural  

1. An atom that has either lost or gained one or more electrons, so that it has an electrical charge. Ions can be either positively or negatively charged.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of ion¹

< Greek ión going, neuter present participle of iénai to go; term introduced by Michael Faraday in 1834

Origin of -ion³

< Latin -iōn- (stem of -iō ) suffix forming nouns, especially on past participle stems; replacing Middle English -ioun < Anglo-French < Latin -iōn-

Explanation

An ion is an atom or particle with a positive or negative electrical charge. Think of an ion as having a plus or minus sign. Ion is a word you are most likely to encounter in a physics or chemistry text. But you don’t have to be a chemist or physicist to understand the concept. If you had a neutral particle and you were able to remove or add an electron, then you would have an ion — a charged particle. Don't confuse the tiny ion with the similar word eon, which is an extremely long period of time.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ion Ion Ion. ions

When polyethylene interacted with an aluminum catalytic site, the reaction produced a positively charged carbon ion.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 21, 2026

"Our ion acts like a tiny sensor that we can use to feel out the structure of the laser light," Leindecker explains.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026

By using a trapped calcium ion as a microscopic probe, the team has now observed the effect experimentally for the first time and measured its behavior in greater detail.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026

For the first time, researchers have experimentally demonstrated the optical Magnus effect by focusing laser light on a single ion and measuring how the light interacts with it.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026

I know you get bored when I go into the math, so I'll summarize: The small, constant thrust of Hermes's ion drives is much harder to deal with than the large point-thrusts of presupply probes.

From "The Martian" by Andy Weir

The need for such high levels of reliability can stress the capabilities of AI architectures and humans alike, according to computer scientist and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

"What revolutionized DNA sequencing wasn't any change in the underlying chemistry. That's remained fundamentally the same," says Brian T. Chait, Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry and Gaseous Ion Chemistry at Rockefeller.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2026

Games will also air on Ion and USA Network.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026

Notably, the number of worldwide procedures performed using the da Vinci system and Ion bronchoscopy platform rose 20%, with the Ion platform seeing particularly strong growth.

From Barron's ● Oct. 22, 2025

Ion found the jewels and looked from them to her.

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton

In the first place, the Portuguese, who discovered that island in 1506, and explored its coasts in the following years, could not have Ion. remained in ignorance of De Gonneville's voyage.

From The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 by Ernest Favenc

Carefully controlled laser beams were then used to adjust how the ions interacted with one another.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

Researchers first demonstrated them in trapped ions in 1986, followed by photons, the fundamental particles of light, in 2007.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026

"This arrangement enabled us to pack in much more ytterbium. In our particles, the light energy coming in flows almost entirely in one direction, inward toward the erbium ions."

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

"We were able to create nice gradient: the concentration of embedded ytterbium ions gets denser as you go through each layer, with the core being the most dense," says Wu.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

Andre was very keen about the role of divalent metals in phage multiplication and so was receptive to my belief that ions were decisively important for nucleic-acid structure.

From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson