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Theme week! Words beginning with pt-. Because, yanno, Greek roots we can barely pronounce are fun, and I couldn't find enough phth- words.
ptomaine ('TOH-main) - n., any of a class of foul-smelling alkaloids produced by bacteria during putrefaction of animal or plant protein; (obs.) food poisoning.
Food poisoning having been thought to be caused by ptomaines, until a different set of bacteria were identified as the culprit. Most ptomaines are, in fact, non-poisonous, but even so they're also distinctly non-edible, to put it in terms of a mushroom guide. Borrowed in the 1870s from either French ptomaïne or Italian ptomaina, both derived from Greek ptōma, corpse, from piptein, to fall.
---L.
ptomaine ('TOH-main) - n., any of a class of foul-smelling alkaloids produced by bacteria during putrefaction of animal or plant protein; (obs.) food poisoning.
Food poisoning having been thought to be caused by ptomaines, until a different set of bacteria were identified as the culprit. Most ptomaines are, in fact, non-poisonous, but even so they're also distinctly non-edible, to put it in terms of a mushroom guide. Borrowed in the 1870s from either French ptomaïne or Italian ptomaina, both derived from Greek ptōma, corpse, from piptein, to fall.
---L.
