adjuvant
nounEtymology
Learned borrowing from Latin adiuvant-, adjuvant- + English -ant (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘exhibiting a condition or process’; and forming agent nouns). Adiuvant-, adjuvant- are oblique stems of adiuvāns, adjuvāns (“assisting, helping”), the present active participle of adiuvō (“to assist, help; to be useful; etc.”), from ad- (“prefix meaning ‘to; toward’”) + iuvō (“to aid, help; to save”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ewH- (“to assist, help; to save”)). Adjective sense 3 (“of a form of therapy or treatment: additional, supplementary”) and noun sense 1.4 (“additive which aids or modifies the action of the principal ingredient of a drug”) are possibly derived from French adjuvant (adjective, noun).
› Someone or (more commonly) something that…
Agriculture, Business, Lifestyle Formal An additive (often a separate product) that enhances the efficacy of a pesticide, but has little or no pesticidal effect itself.
Immunology, Medicine, Sciences Formal A substance enhancing the immune response to an antigen.
- The well-known tropic action of immune serum as an adjuvant to phagocytosis suggested early in our studies that we might here be dealing with a similar phenomenon.1914 November, Frederick P. Gay, Edith J[ane] Claypole, “Specific Hyperleukocytosis: Studies in Typhoid Immunization”, in Archives of Internal Medicine, volume XIV, number 5, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 662–670:
Medicine, Pharmacology, Sciences Archaic, Formal An additive which aids or modifies the action of the principal ingredient of a drug.
- Derived terms
- adjuvanted, adjuvant therapy, chemoadjuvant, coadjuvant, Freund's adjuvant, immunoadjuvant, neoadjuvant, postneoadjuvant