Insulin

How to spell insulin

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce insulin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does insulin mean?

1. nounA hormone made by the pancreas that regulates blood sugar, also given as a medication to people with diabetes.

Insulin in a sentence

• After her diagnosis she had to inject insulin before every meal.

• The pancreas releases insulin to lower the level of glucose in the blood.

Where does insulin come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Insulin takes its name from the Latin word insula, meaning 'island', the same root that gave English 'isle', 'insular' and 'peninsula'. The hormone is produced by clusters of cells in the pancreas called the islets of Langerhans, literally 'little islands' of tissue, and that watery image is exactly what the name preserves. The term was coined in the early twentieth century from insula plus the chemical suffix -in, which scientists routinely attached to the names of compounds and proteins. It became famous after 1921 and 1922, when researchers in Toronto isolated the substance and used it to treat diabetes, turning a fatal condition into a manageable one. The spelling trap is that single 's' followed by 'ul', echoing the island root rather than any double letter.

How the word is built

• insul- (from Latin insula: island)
• -in (suffix for biochemical substances)