trimethylamine

1 9.9

A colorless chemical with a strong fishy smell found in rotten fish and some factories

noun
/ˌtraɪˌmɛθɪlˈeɪmiːn/

Specialized

: trimetilamina

Scientists discovered that trimethylamine increases in quantity when seafood spoils.
a trimethylamine compound

Examples

Your liver then turns that into trimethylamine oxide.

What the Health (2017)
While you eat animal flesh every day, you are summoning up bacteria that eat carnitine and those bacteria will turn that carnitine into a molecule called trimethylamine.

What the Health (2017)
Means my body can't break down trimethylamine.

The Holdovers (2023)
For the product index, Peot is interested in three compounds: trimethylamines (TMA), ammonia, and total reduced sulfurs (TRS).

Academic text (2001)
The foul odor in the kitchen was due to trimethylamine, a compound found in decaying fish.
Trimethylamine is responsible for the strong fishy smell often associated with rotten food.

Synonyms

odorant

vstrimethylamine

Specialized

1 6.7

A substance that gives off a smell to attract or detect insects

is one specific chemical that causes a fishy smell in decay and industry

Surface Forms

trimethylamine singular

trimethylamines plural

Morphology

trimethylamine = methylamine (semi-transparent) = tri + methyl + amine

The word is formed by the productive chemical-naming pattern tri- + methyl + amine (three methyl groups attached to an amine), which is a straightforward morphological construction in chemistry.

Etymology

Trimethylamine breaks into three clear parts: tri- meaning 'three', methyl meaning 'a small carbon group' from methane, and amine meaning 'a nitrogen part' like the amino in 'amino acid'. So the name tells you it is a molecule with 'three' methyl groups attached to an 'amine' part, and that is why this chemical often causes a strong fishy smell.