Word.ws English Dictionary

paraben

paraben noun: any of a group of chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, wherein the hydrogen of a parahydroxybenzene molecule is replaced by an alkyl group.

paraben: any of a group of chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, wherein the...
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Noun

paraben (plural parabens)

  1. Any of a group of chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, wherein the hydrogen of a parahydroxybenzene molecule is replaced by an alkyl group
    • I got breast cancer this year, and now avoid products containing parabens.2007 February 19, “Products for the Skin (1 Letter)”, in New York Times

Forms of paraben

pluralparabens

Origin of paraben

Blend of para- + hydroxybenzoate.

Words formed from paraben

Questions about paraben

What does paraben mean?
Paraben means any of a group of chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, wherein the hydrogen of a parahydroxybenzene molecule is replaced by an alkyl group.
What part of speech is paraben?
Paraben is a noun.
What is the plural of paraben?
The plural of paraben is parabens.

Words near paraben in the dictionary

  1. parabellums
  2. parabelt
  3. parabelts
  4. parabema
  5. parabemata
  6. paraben
  7. parabens
  8. parabenzoquinone
  9. parabiathlon
  10. parabicanonical
  11. parabigeminal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paraben (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: “paraben.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paraben. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.