Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Ptomaine
/ˈtoʊmeɪn/noun
Any of the foul-smelling amines produced as protein decays, once blamed for food poisoning.
The Greek roots
πτῶμα
ptôma
fallen body, corpse
Literally: “corpse stuff”
Follow a root:πτῶμα1 word
The story of the word
Francesco Selmi coined ptomaina in 1878 for the alkaloids he pulled out of rotting flesh, and "ptomaine poisoning" became the standard American diagnosis for a bad meal. It was wrong: bacteria and their toxins cause the illness, and the amines themselves do little at the quantities present. πτῶμα comes from πίπτω, to fall, so a Greek corpse is a thing that has fallen, and two of the compounds carry the blunter names putrescine and cadaverine.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Italian coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
symptomasymptoteptosis
In a sentence
Her grandmother still blames every upset stomach on ptomaine.