Also seri‑.
Silk.
Latin sericum, silk.
The production of raw silk by breeding silkworms is sericulture, carried out by sericulturists; something sericeous is silky or covered in fine hairs; sericin is a gelatinous protein found in silk; sericite is a fine-grained fibrous white mica with a silky lustre. The combining form is irregularly abbreviated to seri‑ in serigraphy, a silk-screening process that produces a serigraph, and in serine, an amino acid found in most proteins, which was first obtained from silk.
Copyright © Michael Quinion 2008–. All rights reserved. Your comments are very welcome.