Lutamide

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A drug that blocks the effects of androgens in the body, commonly used in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer
2. An anti-androgen compound that inhibits male hormone activity, prescribed as part of hormone therapy for prostate carcinoma
3. A medication that antagonizes androgen receptors, employed therapeutically to slow the progression of hormone-dependent prostate malignancy

Etymology: Lutamide is a pharmaceutical name rather than an old English word, and its history is a chemist's construction. It is the synonym of "flutamide", a drug used against prostate cancer, and the name was assembled by blending pieces of other chemical names into one. The fluoro- part comes from fluorine, the element whose name is itself formed from Latin "fluere", meaning "to flow", since fluorite was used as a flux in smelting. The isobut(yr)amide part comes from a family of chemical names: "amide" is built from "ammonia", which traces back to Egyptian Amun via Greek and Latin, joined to the suffix "-ide", while "isobutyr-" refers to a four-carbon acid group. Chemists combined these fragments to describe the molecule's structure. The name "lutamide" is therefore a blend of the same drug name, not a separately documented word with its own separate history.