noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   that part of the molecule of a dye responsible for its colour
2. 2
   the chemical group that gives color to a molecule wordnet
3. 3
   (more generally) the group of atoms in a molecule in which the electronic transition responsible for a given spectral band is located

Etymology

From chromo- + -phore.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.