urushiol
/ʊˈɹuːʃiˌɔl/noun
urushiol is a noun meaning “An oil found in plants of the family Anacardiaceae, causing an allergic skin rash on contact; consists of a variable mixture of several related…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-R-U-S-H-I-O-L, and it appears about once in every 49 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of urushiol is urushiols.
What does urushiol mean?
noun
- 1
An oil found in plants of the family Anacardiaceae, causing an allergic skin rash on contact; consists of a variable mixture of several related organic compounds.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce urushiol?
- /ʊˈɹuːʃiˌɔl/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of urushiol
- urushiols plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is urushiol?
Urushiol appears about once in every 49 million words in written English, the 217,360th 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).
Urushiol in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense oil causing allergic rash:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | urushiol |
| Portuguese | urushiol |
| Spanish | urushiol |
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 urushiol come from?
From Japanese 漆 (うるし, urushi, “lacquer tree”) + -ol (“oil”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).