Antitoxins

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Biological agents created to neutralize poisons and protect health
2. Compounds or proteins that inhibit the effects of harmful toxins, enhancing the body's resistance to disease
3. Proteins or other molecules that act against poisons to prevent harm to the body

Etymology: The word is an inflected form, the plural of "antitoxin", so the key is what the singular names. An antitoxin is a substance the body produces, or that is produced for it, to neutralise a specific toxin. The "anti-" comes from the Ancient Greek "anti", meaning "against" or "opposite", and the "toxin" half comes from the Greek "toxon", meaning "bow" (as in the archer's weapon), because the poison was associated with arrows. The "toxin" element entered modern scientific vocabulary through the Greek "toxikon", a term for poison used on arrows, which passed into Latin as "toxicum" and later gave rise to the Modern English "toxin". Combining that with the Greek prefix produced "antitoxin" in English, and the plural "antitoxins" simply refers to several such substances.

Synonyms: antibodies, neutralizers