Deoxyhexose

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Any of a class of six-carbon sugars in which one hydroxyl group has been replaced by hydrogen, so the molecule contains one fewer oxygen atom than a typical hexose
2. A hexose monosaccharide that has lost an oxygen atom at one carbon position, making it a modified sugar found in nucleic acids and other biological molecules
3. A simple sugar with six carbon atoms in which a hydroxyl group has been removed, such as the sugar that forms the backbone of deoxyribonucleic acid

Etymology: Deoxyhexose is a technical coinage built from two chemistry terms, and its parts explain it. "Hexose" is a sugar with six carbon atoms, from Greek "hex" (six) and the "-ose" ending chemists use for sugars. "Deoxy-" marks a sugar in which one oxygen-bearing hydroxyl group has been replaced by hydrogen, so the prefix means "minus an oxygen" in this context. Combined, the word names a six-carbon sugar missing one of its oxygen atoms. The word belongs to the systematic naming of carbohydrates, which developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as chemists began mapping sugar structures. Its formation follows the same pattern as related names such as deoxyribose, so anyone who knows one of these terms can decode the others. Nothing in the word's history is older than that chemical vocabulary; it was assembled from existing scientific building blocks rather than inherited from ancient usage.