Mitochondria

How to spell mitochondria

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce mitochondria

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mitochondria mean?

1. nounThe structures inside living cells that produce most of the cell's energy, often called the powerhouses of the cell.

Mitochondria in a sentence

• The biology lecture explained how mitochondria convert nutrients into usable energy.

• Damaged mitochondria have been linked to fatigue and certain inherited diseases.

Where does mitochondria come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from two Greek roots: mitos, meaning 'thread', and chondrion, a diminutive of chondros meaning 'grain' or 'granule', so the literal sense is something like 'little thread granules'. The German cytologist Carl Benda coined the term in 1898 after observing these structures inside cells under the microscope, where they sometimes appeared thread-like and sometimes granular. The form 'mitochondria' is the plural; a single one is a 'mitochondrion', following the Greek pattern in which the singular ending '-on' becomes '-a' in the plural, just as 'criterion' becomes 'criteria'. Because the word is built from classical Greek rather than everyday English, the spelling preserves the original 'ch' (a transliteration of the Greek chi) in 'chondria', which is exactly the stretch that trips writers up. The same chondros root survives in medical words such as 'chondritis' and 'chondrocyte', both relating to cartilage.

How the word is built

• mito- (from Greek mitos: thread)
• chondri- (from chondrion: little granule)
• -a (plural ending)