Benzofurans

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Organic compounds made of a benzene ring fused to a furan ring, used as building blocks in pharmaceuticals and dyes
2. Chemical substances built from a benzene ring joined to a five-membered furan ring, important in drug and dye manufacture
3. Fused aromatic heterocyclic compounds containing a benzene and furan ring system, found in many natural products and medicines

Etymology: Benzofuran is a chemical compound name built from two parts that each carry their own history. The "benzo-" element comes from benzoin, a resin whose name traces through French and Catalan back to the Arabic "lubān jāwiyy," meaning "Javanese incense," since the resin was traded from the Malay-Indonesian region. The "furan" element comes from Latin "furfur," meaning bran, the source of furfural, a substance first obtained from bran. Furan was named by analogy with those earlier chemical names, and benzofuran joins the two halves: a benzene ring fused to a furan ring. The "-an" ending is the standard chemical suffix for a ring compound, a form descended from Latin "-ānus" through Old French. "Benzofurans" is simply the plural, used when speaking of several molecules of this type or of the wider class of compounds sharing its structure.