Rutinose

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. Containing or made up of rutinose, a disaccharide sugar formed from the combination of rhamnose and glucose
2. Composed of or characterized by the presence of rutinose, a two-unit sugar molecule found in plants and glycosides
3. Containing the disaccharide rutinose, a compound sugar derived from the linkage of rhamnose and glucose units

Etymology: Rutinose is a sugar, and its name is a chain of chemical labels. The base is "rutin", a compound found in the plant genus Ruta (rue), and the suffix "-ose", the standard chemical ending for sugars, was borrowed through French "glucose" from Ancient Greek "gleûkos", meaning "sweet wine" or "must". So the word's core ending points back to a Greek word for something you drink, not to anything botanical. Rutinose is the disaccharide that is attached to rutin's sugar-free part, so the name simply tells a chemist what the molecule contains. "Rutin" itself is built on the plant name, and the Latin "-īnus" suffix that appears in many chemical names is inherited through Old French and Middle English into the "-in" ending of English chemical terms.