sulfonylurea
noun
sulfonylurea is a noun meaning “Any of a class of antidiabetic drugs that act by increasing insulin release from the beta cells in the pancreas; some are also used as herbicides” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-U-L-F-O-N-Y-L-U-R-E-A, and it appears about once in every 20 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sulfonylurea is sulfonylureas.
What does sulfonylurea mean?
noun
- 1
Any of a class of antidiabetic drugs that act by increasing insulin release from the beta cells in the pancreas; some are also used as herbicides.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of sulfonylurea
- sulfonylureas plural
- sulphonylurea
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sulfonylurea?
Sulfonylurea appears about once in every 20 million words in written English, the 136,649th 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).
Where does sulfonylurea come from?
From sulfonyl + urea.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).