Protein

How to spell protein

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce protein

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does protein mean?

1. nounA nitrogen-rich nutrient made of amino acids, essential to the diet and to the structure of living cells.

Protein in a sentence

• The nutritionist advised adding more protein to his breakfast.

• Eggs and lentils are both rich sources of protein.

Where does protein come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek prōteios, meaning 'primary' or 'of the first rank', which was itself built on prōtos, the ordinary Greek word for 'first'. The modern scientific term was coined in 1838, when the Dutch chemist Gerardus Mulder used it for the nitrogen-rich substances he believed were the most fundamental, primary building blocks of living tissue; the influential Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius is usually credited with suggesting the name. The same prōtos root sits inside familiar words such as 'prototype' (the first model) and 'protocol' (literally the first sheet glued to a document). The added ending -in is the chemistry suffix routinely fixed to the names of substances, as in 'insulin' and 'gelatin'. English took the word up through scientific French and German shortly after its coining, and the spelling preserves the Greek-style 'ei' that catches so many writers who expect the more common 'ie' ordering.

How the word is built

• prote- (from Greek prōteios: primary, of the first rank)
• -in (chemical substance suffix)