Inosite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A sugar alcohol with a six-carbon ring that occurs naturally in muscle tissue and is part of the vitamin B complex family
2. A cyclohexanol compound, chemically related to glucose, found abundantly in animal tissues and certain plants
3. A naturally occurring inositol, a carbocyclic sugar alcohol important for cell signaling and found in many foods

Etymology: Inosite is a chemistry term for a family of sugar-like compounds found in muscle and plant tissue, and its name comes from an ancient Greek word for sinew. The Greek noun "ís" meant "sinew" or "tendon," and its genitive form "inós" (of sinew) gave the base for the new coinage. The name was built on that stem by adding "-ite," the suffix chemists use for minerals, salts and similar substances. The "-ite" ending has an unexpected pedigree. In Greek it was a way of forming adjectives and nouns meaning "belonging to" or "associated with," and it passed through Latin and French before reaching English. Chemists later adopted it freely, so a name like inosite reads as a naming convention rather than a word with a deep history of its own.

Synonyms: inositol