Word.ws English Dictionary

uracil

/ˈjʊərəsɪl/

uracil noun: one of the bases of RNA, pairing with adenine.

uracil: one of the bases of RNA, pairing with adenine
Image: NEUROtiker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

uracil (countable and uncountable, plural uracils)

  1. One of the bases of RNA, pairing with adenine.
    • We did have some success with uracil when we would preincorporate the uracil into a mutant of E. coli that had a uracil requirement and then feed this cellular content from E. coli.2013, W. C. Corning, Stanley C. Ratner, Chemistry of Learning: Invertebrate Research, page 191
    Synonyms:
    U

Synonyms of uracil

Forms of uracil

pluraluracils

Origin of uracil

From uro- + ac(etic) + -ile. Coined in 1885 by the German chemist Robert Behrend, who was attempting to synthesize derivatives of uric acid.

Words formed from uracil

Questions about uracil

What does uracil mean?
Uracil means one of the bases of RNA, pairing with adenine.
What part of speech is uracil?
Uracil is a noun.
How do you pronounce uracil?
Uracil is pronounced /ˈjʊərəsɪl/.
What is the plural of uracil?
The plural of uracil is uracils.

Words near uracil in the dictionary

  1. urachal
  2. urachi
  3. urachovesical
  4. urachus
  5. urachuses
  6. uracil
  7. uracil mustard
  8. uracilated
  9. uracilation
  10. uracilations
  11. uracils

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: uracil (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Tesco250-uracil.wav.

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