Biochemistry

How to spell biochemistry

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce biochemistry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does biochemistry mean?

1. nounThe branch of science concerned with the chemical processes and substances that occur within living organisms.

Biochemistry in a sentence

• She switched from medicine to biochemistry after her first laboratory placement.

• The textbook explains the biochemistry of how cells convert glucose into energy.

Where does biochemistry come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word joins two older elements. The first, bio-, comes from the Greek bios, meaning 'life', the same root that sits inside 'biology' and 'biography'. The second part, chemistry, traces back through the medieval word 'alchemy', which itself reached Europe through the Arabic al-kimiya and ultimately from a Greek word for the art of transmuting metals. By the seventeenth century 'chemistry' had become the respectable science of substances and their reactions. Scientists stitched the two together in the late nineteenth century, with 'biochemistry' appearing in English around the 1880s and 1890s to name the chemistry of living things. The spelling is steadier than it looks: once you remember it is simply 'bio' bolted onto the familiar word 'chemistry', the tricky middle (the 'che' and the unstressed 'is' of '-istry') falls into place.

How the word is built

• bio- (life)
• chem (from chemistry, the study of substances)
• -istry (noun suffix naming a field of study)