Glu

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A sticky substance used to catch birds, borrowed from French, where the term refers to birdlime or a glue-like adhesive
2. A French loanword naming a viscous, adhesive material such as birdlime, used historically to trap small birds
3. The French term for a sticky glue-like substance, especially birdlime, that clings to whatever touches it

Etymology: "Glu" is the standard three-letter shorthand for glutamic acid, the amino acid, and for its ionized form, glutamate. It is clipped from the first syllables of "glutamic", with the abbreviation system standardized by biochemists in the 1960s. The name goes back to 1866, when the German chemist Karl Heinrich Ritthausen isolated the compound from wheat gluten, the sticky protein in flour. He called it "Glutaminsäure", combining "gluten" with "amic", a nod to the amide group in its chemistry. "Gluten" is Latin for "glue", so "glu" ends up, by a roundabout route, close to the sound of the ordinary English word for the stuff that holds things together.