Comment on Sure. Whatev's
ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 1 week agoI’ve heard somewhere that maybe initially vitamin the word comes from “vital amino acids” => vita(l)min(o)… and any substance from a living creature would include amino acids anyway because they have DNA RNA and such
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Vita + amine, actually. Amines are compounds with an NH₂ group; amino acids are a subset of that.
The person who coined the term though he had isolated an amine that was effective against a certain disease. What he had actually isolated was neither an amine nor effective against that disease but was actually a different essential compound. (He was looking for what we now know as thiamine but had actually discovered niacin.)
The name “vitamin” stuck around despite the fact that most vitamins aren’t amines.