fatty acid


nounBiochemistry.
  1. any of a class of aliphatic acids, especially palmitic, stearic, or oleic acid, consisting of a long hydrocarbon chain ending in a carboxyl group that bonds to glycerol to form a fat.

Origin of fatty acid

1
First recorded in 1860–65

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use fatty acid in a sentence

  • In addition to these, the fat of coffee contains a certain percentage of free fatty acids.

    All About Coffee | William H. Ukers
  • The difference was found by Currie73 to be due to an actual difference in the combination of fatty acids present.

    The Book of Cheese | Charles Thom and Walter Warner Fisk

British Dictionary definitions for fatty acid

fatty acid

noun
  1. any of a class of aliphatic carboxylic acids, such as palmitic acid, stearic acid, and oleic acid, that form part of a lipid molecule

  2. another name for carboxylic acid, used esp of a naturally occurring one

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for fatty acid

fatty acid

[ fătē ]


  1. Any of a large group of organic acids, especially those found in animal and vegetable fats and oils. Fatty acids are mainly composed of long chains of hydrocarbons ending in a carboxyl group. A fatty acid is saturated when the bonds between carbon atoms are all single bonds. It is unsaturated when any of these bonds is a double bond.

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