Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Peptide
/ˈpɛptaɪd/noun
A short chain of amino acids, smaller than a protein.
The Greek roots
πεπτός
peptós
digested, cooked
Literally: “digested thing”
Follow a root:πεπτός1 word
The story of the word
Emil Fischer built the German word Peptid early in the twentieth century out of peptone and the chemical ending -ide, while working out how amino acids link into chains. The Greek behind it is πέσσω, to cook or ripen or digest, because Greek medicine held that the stomach cooked its food. That belief is also why bad digestion is dyspepsia and the stomach's own enzyme is pepsin.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
pepsindyspepsiapolypeptidepeptone
In a sentence
The drug is a peptide, which is why you cannot take it as a pill.
They synthesised the peptide overnight and tested it by Friday.