Anticoagulants

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Agents that are effective in preventing the clotting of blood by disrupting the coagulation cascade
2. Compounds designed to impede blood coagulation to reduce the risk of clots forming within the circulatory system
3. Drugs or chemicals that stop blood from forming clots by hindering the clotting process

Etymology: "Anticoagulants" is the plural of "anticoagulant", a compound built from the Greek prefix "anti-", meaning "against", and the English "coagulant", a thing that makes blood or other liquids thicken into clots. The first half comes from the Ancient Greek word "anti", which carried the sense of "opposite to" or "in place of" and passed into English as a prefix long before medicine needed it. The prefix "anti-" is what makes the word a pharmaceutical coinage rather than an ancient one. Greek gave English the building blocks, but the combined term was assembled in English, with "coagulant" describing anything that causes coagulation and "anti-" reversing that action. The result is a label for drugs that do the opposite of what coagulants do: they stop blood from clotting.

Synonyms: blood thinner