erythritol
noun
erythritol is a noun meaning “A naturally occurring tetrahydric sugar alcohol, (2R,3S)-butane-1,2,3,4-tetraol, found in some fruits and used as a food additive and sugar substitute” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-R-Y-T-H-R-I-T-O-L, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of erythritol is erythritols.
What does erythritol mean?
noun
- 1
A naturally occurring tetrahydric sugar alcohol, (2R,3S)-butane-1,2,3,4-tetraol, found in some fruits and used as a food additive and sugar substitute.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of erythritol
- erythritols plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is erythritol?
Erythritol appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 114,361st 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).
Erythritol in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense (2R,3S)-butane-1,2,3,4-tetraol:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | érythritol |
| German | Erythrit, Erythritol |
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 erythritol come from?
From erythr- + -itol; ultimately from Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός (eruthrós, “red”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).