echidnine
echidnine noun: the clear, viscid fluid secreted by the poison glands of certain snakes.
Noun
echidnine (uncountable)
- The clear, viscid fluid secreted by the poison glands of certain snakes.
- A nitrogenous base contained in this fluid, believed to be the active poisonous principle of the virus.
- Prince Lucien Bonaparte has shown that the poison of the Viper consists essentially of a principle to which he has given the name echidnine or viperine1861, Alfred Moquin-Tandon, Elements of Medical Zoology
Origin of echidnine
From Greek ἔχιδνα (ékhidna, “snake, viper”) + -ine.
Questions about echidnine
- What does echidnine mean?
- Echidnine means the clear, viscid fluid secreted by the poison glands of certain snakes.
- What part of speech is echidnine?
- Echidnine is a noun.
Words near echidnine in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: echidnine (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: “echidnine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/echidnine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
