Oligomery vs. Oligomer — What's the Difference?

The condition of being oligomeric.

In chemistry and biochemistry, an oligomer ( (listen)) is a molecule that consists of a few similar or identical repeating units which could be derived, actually or conceptually, from copies of a smaller molecule, its monomer. The name is composed from Greek elements oligo-, "a few" and -mer, "parts".

A polymer whose molecules consist of relatively few repeating units.

A polymer consisting of at least 2 and as many as 100 monomers.

(chemistry) A compound intermediate between a monomer and a polymer, normally having a specified number of units between about five and a hundred.

A molecule composed of a small number of linked monomer units; a short polymer; - compounds called oligomers have less than one hundred monomer units and usually less than thirty. Oligomers of increasing length are called dimer, trimer, tetramer, pentamer, hexamer, heptamer, octamer, nonamer, decamer, etc. In colloquial laboratory jargon, they may also be referred to as nine-mer, ten-mer, eleven-mer, twelve-mer, etc., especially for oligomers of greater than eight units.