insulin

Etymology

It was formed from Latin īnsula (“island”) and the chemical suffix -in,^[2][3][4][5] because the hormone is secreted by the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas.^[2][6][5] The physiologist J. de Meyer proposed insuline in French in 1909 for the hormone, then only supposed to exist,^[5][7][6] and the name was proposed independently in English more than once before the substance was isolated.^[7] Klein credits the suggestion to the English physiologist Sir Edward Sharpey-Schafer,^[8] whose book of 1914 has the OED's first quotation.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The internal secretion of the pancreas that controls the use of sugar, still a hypothesis: 1914, in E. A. Schäfer's Introduction to the Study of the Endocrine Glands.^[2][7][9] Etymonline gives insuline in 1914 and insulin in 1922,^[6] and Barnhart also dates insulin to 1922.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The hormone was first isolated in 1921 by F. G. Banting and C. H. Best,^[7] and the Canadian team of Banting, Best and Macleod adopted the name.^[5][8] Insulin from beef or pork pancreas was long the commercial form,^[9] but genetically engineered human insulin is now preferred.^[10] Insulin shock, a fall in blood sugar caused by too much insulin, is one of its compounds.^[11]

Timeline

• 1909 – French insuline (de Meyer).^[5][6]
• 1914 – insulin, insuline in English.^[2][6][9]
• 1921 – the hormone isolated by Banting and Best.^[7]
• 1922 – insulin in Etymonline and Barnhart.^[6][5]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A hormone made in the pancreas by the islets of Langerhans that controls the level of glucose in the blood; a lack of it causes diabetes.
2. A preparation of this hormone, taken from animals or made by genetic engineering, used to treat diabetes.

Word family

• insulinize
• insulinoma
• proinsulin
• insulin resistance
• insulin pump
• insulin-like growth factor

Related words

• insular
• isle
• peninsula
• insulate

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
11. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press