Fraxinine

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A bitter crystalline compound, a glycoside obtained from the bark of ash trees
2. A glycoside chemical extracted from the bark of trees in the genus Fraxinus
3. The bitter substance found in ash bark that belongs to the glycoside family of compounds

Etymology: Fraxinine is a chemical compound, and its name comes straight from the botanical name of the ash tree. Its root is Latin "fraxinus," meaning "ash tree," which gave English "fraxin," a substance first isolated from ash bark. The "-ine" ending is the standard chemical suffix used for alkaloids and nitrogen-containing compounds, so the name records both the plant it came from and the class of chemicals it belongs to. Fraxinine is a coumarin-type compound, and it was named in the nineteenth century, when chemists routinely labelled newly isolated substances after the plant that yielded them. The name therefore dates from the period of scientific coinage, not from classical antiquity, and the ancient Romans had no word for the compound itself.