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ptomaine

/ˈtoʊmeɪn/noun

ptomaine is a noun meaning “Any of various amines formed by putrefactive bacteria” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-T-O-M-A-I-N-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 46 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of ptomaine is ptomaines.

What does ptomaine mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Any of various amines formed by putrefactive bacteria.

  2. 2

    datedFood poisoning.

    You remember Leonard Skinner. He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.

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

How do you pronounce ptomaine?

  • UK /ˈtəʊmeɪn/
  • US /ˈtoʊmeɪn/

Ptomaine has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

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

Forms of ptomaine

  • ptomaines plural
  • ptomain
  • ptomaïne

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

How common is ptomaine?

Ptomaine appears about once in every 46 million words in written English, the 209,386th 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).

Ptomaine in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense any of various amines formed by putrefactive bacteria:

LanguageWords
Frenchptomaïne
GermanPtomain, Leichengift
Portugueseptomaína
Spanishtomaína, ptomaína

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 ptomaine come from?

From French ptomaïne, from Italian ptomaina, from Ancient Greek πτῶμα (ptôma, “corpse”).

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