Serotonin

How to spell serotonin

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce serotonin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does serotonin mean?

1. nounA chemical that carries signals between nerve cells and helps regulate mood, sleep, and digestion.

Serotonin in a sentence

• The doctor explained that low levels of serotonin can contribute to depression.

• Many antidepressants work by keeping more serotonin available in the brain.

Where does serotonin come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Serotonin is a coined scientific term, assembled in 1948 by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic who isolated the substance from blood. The first part comes from the Latin serum, meaning 'whey' or 'watery fluid', which in medicine names the clear liquid that separates from clotted blood. The middle borrows from 'tonic', ultimately from the Greek tonos meaning 'tension' or 'tone', because the compound was found to affect the tone, or contraction, of blood vessels. The final -in is the standard chemical suffix used for many biological substances. So the whole word literally packages the idea of 'a serum substance affecting vascular tone', and only later did it become famous as the brain chemical tied to mood; the unstressed vowels in the middle (ser-O-to-nin) are the main spelling trap.

How the word is built

• sero- (from serum, the fluid part of blood)
• ton- (from tonic/tone, referring to vascular tone)
• -in (chemical noun suffix)