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calorie

UK/ˈkæləɹi/US/ˈkæləɹi/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,443 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: calories

A calorie is the unit that measures how much energy a food gives you. Count calories, a low-calorie meal, two thousand calories a day.

The one on a food label is really a kilocalorie, a thousand of the scientific kind, which is why it is sometimes written with a capital C. The counts on packets are legally allowed to be out by a fifth, so the precision they suggest is not real.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration · Public domain

Definitions of calorie

  1. 1nouncalorieThe unit that measures how much energy a food gives you.C1

    “A can of cola contains a lot of calories but almost no nutrients.”

calorie is a unit.

Also accepted in games: calories

Where it comes from

French calorie comes from Latin calor, heat.

  1. Latin

    calor

  2. French

    calorie

  3. English, today

    calorie

Borrowed from French calorie, formed from Latin calor. It was originally defined as the large calorie in the early 19th century, with the small calorie being defined some decades later.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health

Practise this word

calorie in the wild

  • The calorie is a unit of energy that originated from the caloric theory of heat.

    Calorie

  • Diet soft drinks (also known as sugar-free, zero-calorie, low-calorie or zero-sugar soda, pop, or soft drinks) are soft drinks which contain little or no sugar and/or calories.

    Diet soft drink

  • The possible effect of calorie restriction on body weight management, longevity, and aging-associated diseases has been an active area of research.

    Calorie restriction

  • Foods composed mostly of empty calories have low nutrient density, meaning few other nutrients relative to their energy content.

    Empty calories

  • Empty calories are more difficult to fit into a diet that is both balanced and within total daily energy expenditure, and so readily create an unhealthy diet.

    Empty calories

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.