peptide

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Peptid,^[2][3][4] a term coined by the chemists E. Abderhalden and P. Bergell in 1903;^[5] Etymonline dates the German word to 1902.^[2] The Oxford Dictionary of English and the Shorter Oxford take the German word as a back-formation from Polypeptid (“polypeptide”),^[3][4] while the OED analyses the English word as formed from the first syllable of peptone and the suffix -ide, on the German model.^[5] Merriam-Webster calls it an international scientific word, probably first formed in German.^[6] French has had peptide since 1906 or earlier.^[5] That word goes back to Pepton, coined in 1849 from Ancient Greek πεπτός (peptós, “cooked, digested”),^[5][2] a verbal adjective from the Greek verb for "to cook", from Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, ripen”).^[2][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A compound of two or more amino acids linked in a chain: 1906, in a heading in the Journal of the Chemical Society.^[5][2][6] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1905–10.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word belongs to the early-20th-century chemistry of proteins: polypeptide is recorded in English from 1903,^[5][2] and the OED notes that dipeptide and tripeptide were in use before peptide itself.^[5] The suffix -ide here probably marks a derivative, as Etymonline puts it.^[2] The word has kept its single technical sense, and appears in compounds such as peptide bond.^[9][4]

Timeline

• 1902 – German Peptid, in Etymonline's dating.^[2] The OED cites Abderhalden and Bergell in 1903.^[5]
• 1903 – polypeptide in English.^[5][2]
• 1906 – a compound of linked amino acids.^[5][2][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A compound made of two or more amino acids joined in a chain, the carboxyl group of one being bonded to the amino group of the next; peptides are obtained by breaking down proteins or by synthesis: The hormone is a short peptide of nine amino acids.^[6][9][5][4]

Word family

• peptidic
• peptidically
• fibrinopeptide
• peptidase
• peptidolytic
• dipeptide
• glycopeptide
• mucopeptide

Related words

• peptone
• peptic
• polypeptide
• pepsin
• dyspepsia
• cook

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins