Furanone

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Any of a class of organic chemical compounds containing a five-membered ring with one oxygen atom and a carbonyl group, found in flavourings and natural products
2. A heterocyclic chemical compound built from a five-membered lactone ring that includes an oxygen atom and a ketone-like carbonyl group
3. Describing a family of cyclic organic molecules whose structure features an unsaturated ring with one oxygen and a carbonyl, many of which occur naturally

Etymology: Furanone is a chemical coinage built from two existing names. The first part, "furan," names the parent compound: a colourless, volatile liquid whose molecule is a five-membered ring containing four carbon atoms and one oxygen atom. The second part, "-one," is the standard chemical suffix marking a ketone, a carbon atom double-bonded to oxygen within the molecule. Joined together, the name describes a furan ring carrying a ketone group, which is why the term covers a whole family of compounds rather than a single substance. The word is therefore a systematic name, not a traditional one. Chemists build such names by attaching suffixes to a recognised parent, so anyone who knows the parent and the suffix can work out what a new compound is. Because the naming follows fixed rules, the same pattern produces many related terms, each signalling a particular ring and functional group.