Relating to or containing a carbonyl group, which is a carbon atom double-bonded to an oxygen atom.
From carbonyl (carbon + French/Spanish -yl) + -ic (adjective suffix). The term emerged in 19th-century organic chemistry to describe compounds with the C=O functional group.
Carbonyl groups are the workhorses of biochemistry—they appear in every protein, every carbohydrate, and nearly every drug we use. Understanding carbonylic compounds was the breakthrough that let chemists finally decode how living systems actually work.
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