Word.ws English Dictionary

alkapton

alkapton noun: homogentisic acid.

Noun

alkapton (uncountable)

  1. homogentisic acid

Forms of alkapton

alternative formalcapton

Origin of alkapton

From German Alkapton, coined by Boedeker (1861) as "an admittedly somewhat barbaric combination" of Alkali (“alkali”) + Ancient Greek κάπτον (kápton), neuter present participle of Ancient Greek κάπτω (káptō, “to gulp down”), after the tendency of alkapton to strongly react with oxygen in alkaline solution.

Words formed from alkapton

Questions about alkapton

What does alkapton mean?
Alkapton means homogentisic acid.
What part of speech is alkapton?
Alkapton is a noun.

Words near alkapton in the dictionary

  1. alkanones
  2. alkanoyl
  3. alkanoylation
  4. alkanoyls
  5. Alkaphrah
  6. alkapton
  7. alkaptonuria
  8. alkaptonuric
  9. alkargen
  10. alkarsin
  11. alkarsine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alkapton (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “alkapton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alkapton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.