theophylline
/θiˈɑf.əl.ɪn/noun
theophylline is a noun meaning “A bitter crystalline compound present in small quantities in tea leaves, isomeric with theobromine; used as a drug in therapy for respiratory diseases” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-H-E-O-P-H-Y-L-L-I-N-E and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does theophylline mean?
noun
- 1
A bitter crystalline compound present in small quantities in tea leaves, isomeric with theobromine; used as a drug in therapy for respiratory diseases.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce theophylline?
- UK /θi.əˈfɪl.iːn/
- UK /θi.əˈfɪl.ɪn/
- US /θiˈɑf.əl.ɪn/
Theophylline has 4 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is theophylline?
Theophylline 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).
Theophylline in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense chemical substance:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | théophylline |
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 theophylline come from?
From Translingual Thea (“former genus name for the tea plant”) + Ancient Greek φύλλον (phúllon, “leaf”) + English -ine.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).