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menthol

UK/ˈmɛnθɒl/US/ˈmɛnθɒl/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutraltechnical · an editor’s judgement

Menthol is the substance that makes something taste and feel cold. Mint sweets, chest rubs, cough drops, the sting of it at the back of the nose.

It comes from mint oil, and it works by a trick: menthol does not lower the temperature of anything, it switches on the nerve endings that report cold, so your mouth believes something has chilled when nothing has. That is why a menthol sweet feels icy and why a chest rub makes breathing feel easier. It gave its name to menthol cigarettes, now banned in a number of countries. The adjective mentholated describes anything it has been added to.

Definitions of menthol

  1. 1nounmentholA substance from mint oil that produces a cooling sensation.B2

    “The lozenges are flavoured with menthol and honey.”

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    mentha — mint

  2. English, today

    menthol

From Latin mentha (“mint”) ol.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 15 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

menthol in the wild

  • The main form of menthol occurring in nature is-menthol, which is assigned the (1R,2S,5R) configuration.

    Menthol

  • Fisherman's Friend is a brand of strong menthol lozenges manufactured by the Lofthouse company in Fleetwood, Lancashire, England.

    Fisherman's Friend

  • Kool is an American brand of menthol cigarette, currently owned and manufactured by ITG Brands LLC, a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco Company.

    Kool (cigarette)

  • In addition, mints can desensitize a region through the activation of TRPM8 receptors (the 'cold'/menthol receptor).

    TRPM8

  • Although structurally not related to menthol, it produces an extreme sensation of cold, both in humans and animals.

    Icilin

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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.