ptomaine

Other forms of ptomaine

plural

ptomaines·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ptomaine

What does ptomaine mean?

ptomaine means "any of various amines (such as putrescine or cadaverine) formed by the action of putrefactive bacteria". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ptomaine?

ptomaine has 2 syllables: pto-maine. The stress falls on "pto". In IPA it is /ˈtoʊmeɪn/.

What is another word for ptomaine?

Close synonyms include ptomain, ptomaine poisoning. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ptomaine a common word?

ptomaine is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.