Immunotherapies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A category of treatments that enhance the body's immune system to fight diseases like cancer
2. Therapeutic approaches that use the immune system to identify and eliminate malignant cells in various health conditions
3. Medical interventions leveraging immune response mechanisms to target and destroy abnormal cells, primarily in oncology

Etymology: Immunotherapy is a modern compound built from two classical pieces: "immuno-", from the English "immune", which came into English from Middle French "immun" and ultimately from Latin "immūnis", meaning "exempt" or "free from duties", and "therapy", from Greek "therapeía", meaning "service" or "healing care". The Greek root "therapōn" meant an attendant or servant, so the medical sense of treating illness grew out of the idea of serving someone. The "immune" half has a legal past. Latin "immūnis" described a person exempt from public service or obligations, and the sense of being protected from disease only developed later in English, when "immune" began to describe bodies shielded from infection. Immunotherapy itself joins these two parts in English, and the plural "immunotherapies" simply names more than one of these treatments.