The process of removing or distributing something away from a specific location, or in chemistry, the spreading of electrons across multiple atoms.
From 'de-' (reversal) plus 'localization.' The American English '-ization' suffix comes from Latin '-izare' through Greek, preferred in American science and policy language since the 1800s.
Delocalization is why benzene doesn't behave like chemists expected—electrons float freely instead of staying put, confounding 19th-century chemistry until quantum mechanics explained the magic.
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