Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Chitin
/ˈkaɪtɪn/noun
The tough polysaccharide that forms insect exoskeletons and fungal cell walls.
The Greek roots
χιτών
chitṓn
tunic worn next to the skin
Literally: “tunic”
Follow a root:χιτών1 word
The story of the word
χιτών was the basic Greek garment, the linen tunic worn under everything else. Auguste Odier applied the name in the 1820s to the substance he separated from beetle wing cases, so an insect's armour is filed in the language as clothing. The same word survives untranslated in chiton, the mollusc whose eight overlapping plates look like plate mail.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
chitonchitinous
In a sentence
Crab shells are mostly chitin stiffened with calcium carbonate.