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Organic compound
noun
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any compound containing carbon atoms covalently bound to other atoms.
"Meteorites contain a wide range of organic compounds."
- 2 any compound of carbon and another element or a radical wordnet
Etymology
Not only are organic compounds essential to living organisms, but the common belief until the 19th century was that only living organisms could produce them, whence the name. When it was shown in the early 1800s that they could also be produced in the laboratory, the old name was kept.
See also for "organic compound"
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