Resin

How to spell resin

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce resin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does resin mean?

1. nounA sticky organic substance secreted by some plants, or a similar synthetic material used in adhesives, varnishes, and plastics.

Resin in a sentence

• Sticky resin oozed from the cut bark of the pine tree.

• The craftsman poured clear epoxy resin into the wooden mould.

Where does resin come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin resina, which named the sticky gum or sap that oozes from trees such as the pine. Latin had in turn borrowed the idea from the Greek rhetine, the term for pine resin, and the two languages traded such words freely around the Mediterranean trade in pitch and incense. English picked it up through Old French resine in the 1300s, originally for the natural secretion used to make varnish, glue, and incense. The meaning later widened in the industrial age to cover synthetic polymers that behave in a similar sticky, hardening way, which is why we now speak of epoxy resin and plastic resin. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending: it sounds like a soft schwa, so writers are tempted toward 'resen' or even confuse it with the unrelated fruit 'raisin'.

How the word is built

• resin (from Latin resina: gum or sap from a tree)