irone

I1R1O1N1E1

noun

Any of several ketones, or a mixture of such, found in orris oil (oil extracted from iris roots), used as odorants in perfumes.

Scrabble 5

Meanings

nounirone (plural irones)

plural irones

  1. chemistryAny of several ketones, or a mixture of such, found in orris oil (oil extracted from iris roots), used as odorants in perfumes.

    1951 [D. Van Nostrand], Frank C. Whitmore, Organic Chemistry, Volume One: Part I: Aliphatic Compounds, Part II: Alicyclic Compounds, 2nd Edition, 2012, Dover republication, page 565, The previously accepted cycloheptene structure for the irones has been shown recently to be wrong.

    2 more examples

    As is well known, Irone is the principal odoriferous constituent of Orris Butter, the essential oil obtained from Orris Root by steam distillation.

    1934, Drug and Cosmetic Industry, Volume 35, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page 256

    The constituents of Orris (Iris) oil that we shall be concerning ourselves with in this chapter are the irones (22-24). Orris oil comes from the steam distillation of the rhizomes of Iris pallida (which contains the major irone components; (-)-trans-α-irone, (+)-cis-γ-irone, (+)-cis-α-irone, (+)-β-irone, and (+)-trans-γ-irone) or Iris germanica. Both species of iris contain the same irones except that the irones in Iris germanica are the optical antipodes of those found in Iris pallida [27].

    1999, Karl Swift, “The Total Synthesis of Synthetically Interesting Perfumery Natural Products”, in K. A. Swift, editor, Current Topics in Flavours and Fragrances: Towards a New Millennium of Discovery, Kluwer Academic Publishers, page 19

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Cite this entry
APA

irone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/irone

MLA

“irone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/irone. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “irone,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/irone.

Source: irone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.