Secretors

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals or glands that produce and release substances such as enzymes, hormones, or fluids within biological systems
2. Entities in living organisms responsible for emitting specific biochemical compounds into the external or internal environment
3. Biological agents or structures specialized in the discharge of materials like secretions vital for physiological processes

Etymology: "Secretors" is the plural of "secretor," a word built from the verb "secrete" plus the suffix "-or," which in English forms nouns for agents, things that do an action. So a secretor is literally something that secretes. The verb itself comes from Latin "secretus," the past participle of "secernere," meaning "to separate" or "to set apart," built from "se-" (apart) and "cernere" (to sift or distinguish). The suffix has a longer ancestry than the verb. It descends from Latin "-tor," which passed through Old French "-eor" into Middle English "-our," and eventually became the modern "-or" spelling. Along that route it carried the same sense of a doer, as in "actor" or "tutor," so the pattern a reader meets in "secretor" is one of the oldest agent endings in the English language.

Synonyms: releasers, emitters, excretors, dischargers

Antonyms: absorbers, intakers