What does "phosphatase" mean?

Any of several enzymes that hydrolyze phosphate esters, and are important in the metabolism of carbohydrates, nucleotides and phospholipids, and in the formation of bone.

What is a synonym for "phosphatase"?

Common synonyms include: dephosphatase.

Phosphatase

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any of several enzymes that hydrolyze phosphate esters, and are important in the metabolism of carbohydrates, nucleotides and phospholipids, and in the formation of bone. countable, uncountable
"These results are in accordance with the observations of Pirani et al., who found that in normal pregnancy there was no correlation between serum heat-stable alkaline phosphatase activity and crude baby weight or placental weight."
2
any of a group of enzymes that act as a catalyst in the hydrolysis of organic phosphates wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

dephosphatase

Example

More examples

"These results are in accordance with the observations of Pirani et al., who found that in normal pregnancy there was no correlation between serum heat-stable alkaline phosphatase activity and crude baby weight or placental weight."

Etymology

From phosphate + -ase.

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