Carcinogenous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Referring to agents or conditions that have the potential to initiate cancer formation in living organisms
2. Concerning substances or factors that contribute to the onset of cancerous cells in various biological systems
3. Having the property of inducing cancer development in cells or tissues

Etymology: "Carcinogenous" is a plain technical formation: "carcino-", a combining form from Greek "karkinos", meaning "crab", joined to the suffix "-genous", from Greek "-genes", meaning "produced by" or "born of". Put together, the literal sense is something like "crab-producing," and the combining form has been used in medicine to refer to cancer, reflecting an ancient comparison between the swollen veins around a tumour and a crab's legs. The crab image is the key to the whole word. Greek physicians used "karkinos" for a malignant growth, and Latin borrowed it as "carcinoma." The "-genous" element appears in many scientific words built on the pattern of "-genic," such as "pathogenous" and "hydrogenous," so "carcinogenous" follows a familiar scientific pattern rather than a traditional English one. The word is a modern coinage from classical parts, so it was built deliberately by scientists and was not used by the ancient Greeks themselves. Its meaning is essentially the same as the more common adjective "carcinogenic," which is built on the same roots with the suffix "-genic."

Synonyms: cancerous, tumorigenic, malignant, neoplastic, oncogenic

Antonyms: benign, non-cancerous, harmless, innocuous, safe