gluten

From Middle French gluten, borrowed from Latin glūten (“glue”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡluːtən/, /ˈɡluːtn̩/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːtən

gluten (countable and uncountable, plural glutens)

1. (obsolete) Fibrin (formerly considered as one of the "animal humours"). [16th–19th c.]
   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Division of the Body. Humors, Spirits.”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 1, section 1, member 2, subsection 2, page 20:

     The Radicall or innate, is dayly ſupplied by nouriſhment, which ſome call Cambium, and make thoſe ſecundary Humors of Ros and Gluten to maintaine it: […]

2. (rare) Any gluey, sticky substance. [from 17th c.]
   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, XXXVII:

     [T]he Fly suspends it self very firmly and easily, without the access or need of any such Sponges fill'd with an imaginary gluten, as many have, for want of good Glasses, perhaps, or a troublesome and diligent examination, suppos'd.

   • 1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae:

     The tyrant machine is the female body, grinding and milling the pulp of matter, the gluten of human flesh.

4. (cooking, biochemistry) The major protein in cereal grains, especially wheat; responsible for the elasticity in dough and the structure in baked bread. [from 19th c.]
   • 2004, Harold McGee, chapter 10, in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner, →ISBN:

     Chew on a small piece of dough, and it becomes more compact but persists as a gum-like, elastic mass, the residue that the Chinese named “the muscle of flour” and that we call gluten. It consists mainly of protein, and includes what may well be the largest protein molecules to be found in the natural world.

   • 2010 June 10, Felicity Cloake, Word of Mouth Blog, The Guardian:

     Unfortunately, wholemeal bread is, according to many experts, a tricky thing to get right, as the lower gluten content of the flour makes for dense results […]

5. (geology) A gluey, sticky mass of clay, bitumen etc. [from 19th c.]
   • 1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford, published 2004, page 669:

     Despite constant rain that turned roads to gluten, the Yankees kept moving.

• gluten on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Lutgen, englut

Borrowed from Latin gluten (“glue”).

• Audio (Barcelona):

  (file)

gluten m (plural glutens)

1. gluten

• “gluten”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “gluten”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2026
• “gluten” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “gluten” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Borrowed from Latin gluten (“glue”).

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: glu‧ten

gluten n (uncountable, no diminutive)

1. gluten

Borrowed from Latin glūten (“glue”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡly.tɛn/

• Audio:

  (file)

gluten m (plural glutens)

1. gluten

• “gluten”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• lugent

From Proto-Italic *gloiten, from Proto-Indo-European *glóh₁ytn̥, from *gleyH- (“to stick; to spread, to smear”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈɡɫuː.tɛn]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈɡluː.ten]

glūten n (genitive glūtinis); third declension

1. glue

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• glūtinō

• “gluten”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “gluten”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "gluten", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “gluten”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “glue”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Learned borrowing from Latin glūten.^[1][2] Doublet of glut and glutyna.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡlu.tɛn/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -utɛn
• Syllabification: glu‧ten

gluten m inan

1. (cooking, biochemistry) gluten (the major protein in cereal grains, especially wheat; responsible for the elasticity in dough and the structure in baked bread)

   Synonym: (in chemistry) glutyna

• gluten in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• gluten in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• Aleksander Zdanowicz (1861), “gluten”, in Słownik języka polskiego, Wilno 1861
• J. Karłowicz, A. Kryński, W. Niedźwiedzki, editors (1900), “gluten”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), volume 1, Warsaw, page 837
• gluten in Narodowy Fotokorpus Języka Polskiego

Borrowed from French gluten.

gluten n (uncountable)

1. gluten

Borrowed from Latin gluten (“glue”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡluten/ [ˈɡlu.t̪ẽn]
• Rhymes: -uten
• Syllabification: glu‧ten

gluten m (plural glútenes)

1. (biochemistry) gluten

• “gluten”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

Borrowed from Latin gluten (“glue”).

gluten n

1. gluten

• tungel