Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

retinol

UK/ˈrɛ.tən̩ɑl/US/ˈrɛ.tən̩ɑl/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — retina sits at #9,468Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Retinol is a vitamin treatment used to smooth skin over time. Start using retinol.

It is one of the very few skin ingredients with real evidence behind it. Retinol has to be introduced slowly and used at night, since it makes skin sensitive to sun.

Jynto (talk) · CC0

Definitions of retinol

  1. 1nounretinolA vitamin treatment used to smooth skin over time.C1

    “The retinol made everything worse for three weeks and then better.”

retinol is a treatment.

Where it comes from

  1. Medieval Latin

    rētīna — retina

  2. Middle English

    rethina

  3. English

    retina

  4. English, today

    retinol

Built from

  • tunica rētīna · Latin — net-like tunic
  • ἀμφιβληστροειδής χῐτών · Ancient Greek — retina

From retina + -ol. retina comes from Middle English rethina, borrowing from Medieval Latin rētīna (“retina”), ellipsis of tunica rētīna (“net-like tunic”), used to describe the blood vessel system at the back of the eye. The phrase is attested in the 12th century in Guillelmus the abbot and Gerard of Cremona—the latter may have created this phrase as a translation for طَبَقَة شَبَكِيَّة "net-like layer", which translates ἀμφιβληστροειδής χῐτών (“retina”), which is attested in the ancient medical writer Galen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Beauty & Cosmetics

Practise this word

retinol in the wild

  • Dietary retinol is absorbed from the digestive tract via passive diffusion.

    Vitamin A

  • A high capacity for long-term storage of retinol means that well-nourished humans can go months on a vitamin A-deficient diet, while maintaining blood levels in the normal range.

    Vitamin A

  • The body converts retinol to retinal and retinoic acid, through which it acts.

    Retinol

  • Diterpenes form the basis for biologically important compounds such as retinol, retinal, and phytol.

    Diterpene

  • Retinyl palmitate, or vitamin A palmitate, is the ester of retinol (vitamin A) and palmitic acid, with formula C36H60O2.

    Retinyl palmitate

1 / 3

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.

Related words

the rētīna family

reinretina

retinol — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others