Palmitic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A fatty acid that is fully saturated, prevalent in both plants and animals, commonly utilized in the manufacturing of various personal care products and food items
2. This specific saturated fatty acid is abundant in palm oil and contributes to both energy storage and dietary sources in living organisms
3. A chemical compound classified as a fully saturated fatty acid commonly found in animal fats and vegetable oils

Etymology: Palmitic takes its name from palm oil, the reddish oil pressed from the fruit of the oil palm, where the acid was first found in quantity. The French chemist who gave the acid its name built the word on "palmite," a French term derived from "palme," the palm tree. To that stem French chemistry attached the adjectival suffix "-ic," the same ending found in acids such as acetic and formic, which marks a substance as belonging to a particular chemical family. The result is a word that records a plant's name carried into a chemical vocabulary. The acid itself is a long chain of carbon atoms with no double bonds between them, which is what makes it "saturated," and it turns up across plant and animal fats, so the word now names a substance far removed from the tree it was named after.