Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A crystalline solid, C17H19NO3, extracted from black pepper and used as flavoring and as an insecticide.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A concretion of volcanic ashes.
  • noun A crystalline alkaloid (C17H19NO3) extracted from pepper.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Chem.) A white crystalline compound of piperidine and piperic acid. It is obtained from the black pepper (Piper nigrum) and other species.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun organic chemistry The alkaloid responsible for the pungency of black pepper

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun derived from pepper (especially black pepper); source of the hotness of black and white pepper

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin piper, pepper; see pepper + –ine.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word piperine.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.