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cinchona

/sɪŋˈkoʊnə/noun

cinchona is a noun meaning “A tree or shrub of the genus Cinchona, native to the Andes in South America but since widely cultivated in Indonesia and India as well for its…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-I-N-C-H-O-N-A, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of cinchona is cinchonas.

What does cinchona mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A tree or shrub of the genus Cinchona, native to the Andes in South America but since widely cultivated in Indonesia and India as well for its medicinal bark.

  2. 2

    The bark of these plants, which yield quinine and other alkaloids useful in reducing fevers and particularly in combatting malaria.

  3. 3

    Any medicine chiefly composed of the prepared bark of these plants.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce cinchona?

  • UK /sɪŋˈkəʊnə/
  • US /sɪŋˈkoʊnə/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-cinchona.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of cinchona

  • cinchonas plural
  • chinchona
  • chincona

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is cinchona?

Cinchona appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 111,684th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Cinchona in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchquinquina (tree), herbe des jésuites (bark)
GermanChinarindenbaum (tree), Chinarinde (bark)
Portuguesequina (tree)
Spanishcascarilla, chinchona, quina, quinaquina, quino, corteza de quino (bark)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does cinchona come from?

From New Latin cinchona, from Spanish Chinchón. Named by Carl Linnaeus after Ana de Osorio, 4th Countess of Chinchón (1599–1625), the wife of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, who was allegedly cured of a fever by the bark.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).