Metabolism

How to spell metabolism

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce metabolism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does metabolism mean?

1. nounThe set of chemical processes in a living body that convert food into energy and maintain life.

Metabolism in a sentence

• A faster metabolism helps the body burn calories more quickly.

• The dietitian explained how age can slow a person's metabolism.

Where does metabolism come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek metabole, meaning 'change' or 'transformation', which was built from metaballein, 'to throw beyond' or 'to alter', combining meta- ('change' or 'beyond') with ballein ('to throw'). That same ballein root, the idea of throwing or casting, also lurks inside words like 'parable' and 'problem'. The modern scientific sense, the sum of chemical processes by which a living body turns food into energy and builds tissue, was shaped in the nineteenth century when physiologists needed a single term for these constant internal changes. English took the word in the 1870s, partly through scientific German and French usage that had already adopted the Greek stem. The spelling trap lies in the soft, unstressed middle vowels: it is met-A-bol-ism, and the second and fourth vowels both blur into a faint schwa that gives no clue to their letters.

How the word is built

• meta- (change)
• bol (from Greek ballein: to throw)
• -ism (noun-forming suffix)