nootkatone
/ˈnuːtkətəʊn/
nootkatone noun: an aromatic organic compound that contributes to the smell and flavour of grapefruit, and is both a sesquiterpene and a ketone.
Noun
nootkatone (usually uncountable, plural nootkatones)
- An aromatic organic compound that contributes to the smell and flavour of grapefruit, and is both a sesquiterpene and a ketone.
- A series of taste tests compared natural nootkatone with 2 synthetic nootkatones, one more highly purified than the other.1967, Canning Trade, Volume 89, Issue 1 − Volume 90, Issue 26, page 458
- Significant differences, both in odor strength and in odor character, have been found between all enantiomeric pairs and are particularly large for the nootkatones.1973, Chemoreception Abstracts, volume 1, page 25
Examples of nootkatone in a sentence
- One of the main flavor compounds in grapefruit is nootkatone, which is found in the fruit in very small amounts and is hard to extract.1999, Joe Schwarcz, Radar, Hula Hoops, and Playful Pigs, unnumbered page:
- A constituent which corresponded to an unidentified GLC (gas-liquid chromatographic) peak in cold-pressed grapefruit oil was isolated and identified as nootkatone (figure 71).1972, Walton B. Sinclair, The Grapefruit: Its Composition, Physiology, and Products, page 252:
- The sesquiterpene ketone, nootkatone, which gives the characteristic aroma to grapefruit, has the same skeleton as valencene, the major sesquiterpene of oranges (Macleod, 1965).2010, Milind Ladaniya, Citrus Fruit: Biology, Technology and Evaluation, page 176:
Forms of nootkatone
| plural | nootkatones |
|---|
Origin of nootkatone
Nootka (cypress) + ketone
Questions about nootkatone
- What does nootkatone mean?
- Nootkatone means an aromatic organic compound that contributes to the smell and flavour of grapefruit, and is both a sesquiterpene and a ketone.
- How do you use nootkatone in a sentence?
- One of the main flavor compounds in grapefruit is nootkatone, which is found in the fruit in very small amounts and is hard to extract.
- What part of speech is nootkatone?
- Nootkatone is a noun.
- How do you pronounce nootkatone?
- Nootkatone is pronounced /ˈnuːtkətəʊn/.
- What is the plural of nootkatone?
- The plural of nootkatone is nootkatones.
Words near nootkatone in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nootkatone (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: “nootkatone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nootkatone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.