Collagen

How to spell collagen

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce collagen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collagen mean?

1. nounA fibrous structural protein found in skin, bones, tendons, and other connective tissue.

Collagen in a sentence

• The moisturiser claims to boost collagen in ageing skin.

• Cartilage is rich in collagen, which gives joints their flexibility.

Where does collagen come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Collagen is a nineteenth-century scientific coinage built from two Greek elements: kolla, meaning 'glue', and the combining form -gen, from genes, meaning 'producing' or 'giving rise to'. The name literally describes a substance that produces glue, because boiling animal connective tissue, skin, and bones yields gelatine, the sticky stuff once used as adhesive. Scientists adopted the term around the 1860s as the structural protein it names was identified in skin, tendons, and cartilage. The same kolla root sits inside 'collage', the art form of glued-together fragments, and inside the old word 'colloid'. Remembering that the word begins with the glue root 'coll-', spelled with a double l, helps fix the otherwise easily slurred spelling.

How the word is built

• coll- (from Greek kolla: glue)
• -gen (from Greek -genes: producing, giving rise to)