melanin

/ˈmɛlənɪn/

More pronunciations (2)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈmelənɪn/

melanin noun: any of a group of naturally occurring dark pigments, especially the pigment found in skin, hair, fur, and feathers.

Noun

melanin (countable and uncountable, plural melanins)

Any of a group of naturally occurring dark pigments, especially the pigment found in skin, hair, fur, and feathers.
- Generally, cephalopod ink includes melanin, enzymes related to melanin production, catecholamines, peptidoglycans, free amino acids and metals (Derby 2014) .2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian

கரியம், கருநிறம்வழங்கி, கருநிறமி, கருநிறப்பசை

plural	melanins

From New Latin, from Ancient Greek stem of μέλας (mélas, “black”) + -in; by surface analysis, melan(o)- + -in.

What does melanin mean?: Melanin means any of a group of naturally occurring dark pigments, especially the pigment found in skin, hair, fur, and feathers.
What is melanin in Tamil?: Melanin in Tamil is கரியம், கருநிறம்வழங்கி, கருநிறமி. See Melanin meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is melanin?: Melanin is a noun.
How do you pronounce melanin?: Melanin is pronounced /ˈmɛlənɪn/ (UK).
What is the plural of melanin?: The plural of melanin is melanins.

Adapted from Wiktionary: melanin (page history and authors); melanin (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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