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propanoic acid

propanoic acid noun: a colourless liquid with a sharp unpleasant odour; produced by the bacterial breakdown of fatty acids and therefore found in sweat and some cheese.

Noun

propanoic acid (uncountable)

  1. A colourless liquid with a sharp unpleasant odour; produced by the bacterial breakdown of fatty acids and therefore found in sweat and some cheese.
  2. The short chain aliphatic carboxylic acid, CH₃CH₂COOH, used as a preservative, and in the manufacture of many chemical compounds.
    Synonyms:
    E280 when used as a preservative, propionic acid

Synonyms of propanoic acid

Origin of propanoic acid

An IUPAC systematic name for the chemical originally named propionic acid. The prop- prefix is derived from propionic.

Words formed from propanoic acid

Questions about propanoic acid

What does propanoic acid mean?
Propanoic acid means a colourless liquid with a sharp unpleasant odour; produced by the bacterial breakdown of fatty acids and therefore found in sweat and some cheese.
What part of speech is propanoic acid?
Propanoic acid is a noun.

Words near propanoic acid in the dictionary

  1. propanil
  2. propanoate
  3. propanoates
  4. propanocaine
  5. propanoic
  6. propanoic acid
  7. propanoid
  8. propanoids
  9. propanol
  10. propanolamine
  11. propanolamines

Source and license

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