The name Fauvel points to the French fauve ('chestnut, reddish-yellow, or fawn'), another sense of fauve meaning the class of wild animals whose coats are at least partly brown, and the medieval belief that a fallow horse was a symbol of deceit and dishonesty.
An oxidizing agent is a reactant that removes electrons from other reactants during a redox reaction. The oxidizing agent typically takes these electrons for itself, thus gaining electrons and being reduced. An oxidizing agent is thus an electron acceptor.
Conversely, the species that donates electrons is called the reducing agent; when the reaction occurs, it reduces the other species. In other words, what is oxidized is the reducing agent and what is reduced is the oxidizing agent. (Note: the oxidizing and reducing agents can be the same element or compound, as in disproportionation reactions). A good example of a redox reaction is the thermite reaction, in which iron atoms in ferric oxide lose (or give up) O atoms to Al atoms, producing Al 2 O 3.