∞ generated and posted on 2016.08.22 ∞
Carbohydrate that consists of only one or two subunits.
Sucrose, lactose, and maltose – which are table sugar, milk sugar, and a kind of sugar that is derived from starches, respectively – all consist of two sugar subunits of various kinds. That is, they are disaccharides), with glucose consistently among these sugars one of those subunits.
Glucose, galactose, and fructose consist, by contrast, of only individual (single) sugar subunits. That is, they instead are monosaccharides. See in addition aldose, ketose, triose, pentose, hexose, etc., which are all descriptions of individual types of monosaccharides.
Sugars contrast with polysaccharides, which are carbohydrates that can contain substantially more subunits than just one or two, e.g., up to thousands.