Sophorose

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A disaccharide sugar made of two glucose units joined by a beta-1,2 glycosidic bond, found in certain plants and fungi
2. A sugar composed of two linked glucose molecules, occurring naturally in some plants and microorganisms
3. Chemical sugar formed from a pair of glucose units bonded together, a compound studied in carbohydrate chemistry

Etymology: "Sophorose" is a chemist's coinage built from the plant genus "Sophora," the pagoda tree, and the suffix "-ose," which marks sugars. The sugar was named after the tree because chemists first isolated it from Sophora plants, which belong to the pea family. The genus name itself likely comes from an Arabic word for a tree, though its exact path into Latin is uncertain. The sugar is a disaccharide, meaning two glucose units joined together, and the name records its origin rather than any meaning in the word itself. The "-ose" ending follows the same pattern as "glucose" and "sucrose," so the name tells a chemist both that it is a sugar and where it was first found.