Lutidine

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Any of three isomeric organic compounds, dimethylpyridines, that are colourless liquids with a pyridine-like odour and occur in coal tar and bone oil
2. A pyridine base with two methyl groups, existing in three structural forms found in coal tar and animal bone oil and used in chemical synthesis
3. One of several isomeric heterocyclic bases, the dimethyl derivatives of pyridine, obtained from coal tar and bone oil as oily liquids

Etymology: Lutidine was named in 1851 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Anderson, who was working with the chemistry of coal-tar and bone-oil bases. Its name is a contraction of "toluidine," a related compound, and it was built as an anagram of that word: the letters are rearranged and trimmed rather than simply shortened. The two substances share the same empirical formula, which is why Anderson linked them so closely in naming. The "lut-" of the name thus comes from scrambling "toluidine" rather than from any Greek or Latin root, so the word is a purely chemical coinage with no older everyday sense behind it. Its suffix "-idine" follows the pattern of other nitrogen-containing bases named in the same period, marking it as an amine-type compound.