caloric
caloric Lexical Profile
caloric Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Relating to or containing calories as units of food energy.
"The nutritionist recommended tracking daily caloric intake to maintain a balanced diet."
Relating to heat or thermal energy.
"Engineers measured the caloric output of the combustion engine during the efficiency trial."
• noun
In obsolete scientific theory, a weightless, self-repellent fluid once thought to flow from hotter bodies to colder ones as the physical substance of heat.
"Eighteenth-century physicists debated whether friction released trapped caloric from inside solid materials."
Word Nuance & Usage
In contemporary usage, 'caloric' typically means relating to calories (as in 'caloric intake'), whereas 'calorific' more often describes food that is high in calories and likely to cause weight gain, particularly in British English.
• Rhymes for caloric
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed in the late 18th century from French 'calorique', coined by chemist Antoine Lavoisier from Latin 'calor' ('heat') to name the hypothetical weightless fluid once believed to be the substance of heat.