Antibiotic
nounA medicine that kills or stops the growth of bacteria, used to treat infections.
How to spell antibiotic
10 letters · 5 syllables
How to pronounce antibiotic
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does antibiotic mean?
- nounA medicine that kills or stops the growth of bacteria, used to treat infections.
- adjectiveRelating to or having the property of destroying or inhibiting bacteria.
Antibiotic in a sentence
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noun
The doctor prescribed an antibiotic for the chest infection.
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adjective
The cream contains an antibiotic agent to prevent infection.
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noun
She finished the full course of the antibiotic before stopping.
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adjective
Researchers tested the antibiotic properties of the new compound.
Where does antibiotic come from?
Language of origin: Greek
This word is built entirely from Greek elements: anti, meaning 'against' or 'opposed to', and bios, meaning 'life', joined by the common ending -tic that turns a stem into an adjective or noun. The literal idea is therefore 'against life', specifically against the life of the microbes that cause infection. The French microbiologist Jean Paul Vuillemin coined the related noun 'antibiosis' in 1889 to describe one organism destroying another, and the modern sense of 'antibiotic' was popularised in the 1940s by Selman Waksman, who discovered streptomycin. The same bios root appears in 'biology', 'biography' and 'antibody', while the anti- prefix turns up in dozens of everyday words like 'antifreeze' and 'antiseptic', so recognising those two familiar parts is the easiest way to keep the spelling steady.
How the word is built
- anti- (against)
- bio (from Greek bios: life)
- -tic (adjective/noun suffix)
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