Saccharose

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A natural sweetener derived from plants that is chemically classified as a disaccharide comprising glucose and fructose
2. A carbohydrate commonly recognized as table sugar, which serves both as a sweetener in foods and an energy source
3. A natural carbohydrate composed of glucose and fructose units found in many plants and used as a sweetening agent

Etymology: The sugar's name carries a trail of borrowings across three continents. Its oldest ancestor is the Sanskrit "śárkarā", meaning gravel or grit, which describes how sugar crystals look and feel. That word travelled through Pali and into ancient Greek as "sákkhar", and Latin borrowed it as "saccharum", the source of the English prefix "saccharo-". The chemists who named sugars in the modern era built on that Latin root. The suffix "-ose", a standard label for sugars, was added to form "saccharose", a name for the common table sugar. The same "-ose" ending appears in "glucose", which comes from French "glucose", itself coined from the ancient Greek "gleûkos", meaning sweet wine.

Synonyms: sucrose, table sugar, carbohydrate, sugar, glucose