Quinone

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A class of cyclic organic compounds characterized by a six-membered carbon ring with two ketone groups in the structure
2. Any of a group of aromatic compounds containing two carbonyls, often used in dyes and biological processes
3. Chemical compounds containing a fully conjugated structure that can undergo reduction and oxidation, playing roles in various natural systems

Etymology: Quinone takes its name from quinine, the bitter alkaloid extracted from cinchona bark, and it is in fact a cousin of quinine rather than a derivative of it. The chain runs through quinic acid, a compound first isolated from cinchona bark, whose name comes from quinine by way of the same root. Quinic acid is itself the parent of quinone: when chemists oxidized quinic acid, one of the products they obtained was this new compound, and they named it accordingly. The ending does most of the chemical work. "-one" is the suffix chemists adopted from "ketone," which in turn was formed in German as "Keton" and then borrowed into English. It signals the presence of a ketone group, the carbon-oxygen double bond at the heart of the molecule. So the name packages two facts at once: where the substance was found, and what kind of structure it has.

Synonyms: ketone, oxidized compound, aromatic compound, organic compound, chemical