synthesize — this word means to put something together, to make something out of
different parts. If you stitched a quilt together from different scraps of cloth, or built a
car out of parts from a junkyard, you would be synthesizing. In chemistry, synthesizing means
putting together new molecules. Any material made from molecules that chemists have synthesized
is called synthetic. The act of
synthesizing is called synthesis.
Even though we often use the word "synthetic" to describe human-made materials, synthesis also
happens in nature. When the body makes molecules of
DNA or
proteins, we say the body is synthesizing
these molecules.