agglutination

noun — 3 senses

agglutination

noun

/əˌɡluːtɪˈneɪ.ʃən/

Etymology

Multiple origins. The oldest usage, in relation to tissues adhering or healing in medical contexts, appears in the 16th century, from French agglutination. The linguistic sense derived from this usage during the early 19th century. The sense of gluing or cementing objects together in other contexts is from New Latin agglutinatio, from Latin agglūtinō (“glue; fasten to”) + -iō (a suffix used to form nouns). Compare Spanish aglutinación (“uniting; (linguistic) agglutination”), French agglutiner (“to paste together”, verb), and German Agglutination (“(linguistic) agglutination”) and Agglutinierung (“(biological) adhering, clumping”).

1

The act of uniting by glue or other tenacious substance; the state of being thus united; adhesion of parts.

2

Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences Combination in which root words are united with little or no change of form or loss of meaning. See agglutinative.

3

The clumping together of red blood cells or bacteria, usually in response to a particular antibody.

  • It may resemble the factor 5 in Salmonella, a heat-labile determinant on the endotoxin molecule which, because of its superficial location, blocks the agglutination reaction of the deeper heat-stable O antigens in the same way as do the Vi and K antigens.1966, Karina Dzintars Burda, A Study of Heat-labile Superficial Somatic Antigen of Vibrio Fetus, page 41:
Derived terms
autoagglutination, coagglutination, erythroagglutination, haemagglutination, hemagglutination, immunoagglutination, leucoagglutination, leukoagglutination, macroagglutination, microagglutination, polyagglutination, seroagglutination
Related terms
agglutinate, agglutinative, agglutinant

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.