humectant
/hjuːˈmɛktənt/noun
humectant is a noun meaning “Any substance that promotes the retention of water, especially one used to keep a food product moist” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-U-M-E-C-T-A-N-T, and it appears about once in every 34 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of humectant is humectants.
What does humectant mean?
noun
- 1
Any substance that promotes the retention of water, especially one used to keep a food product moist.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce humectant?
- /hjuːˈmɛktənt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of humectant
- humectants plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is humectant?
Humectant appears about once in every 34 million words in written English, the 178,202nd 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).
Humectant in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense substance that promotes the retention of water:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Feuchthaltemittel |
| Portuguese | humectante |
| Spanish | humectante |
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 humectant come from?
From Latin ūmectāns, present participle of ūmectō (“to moisten”), from ūmectus (“moist”), from ūmeō (“to be moist”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).