Serogroups

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Sets of bacteria or viruses that share the same surface antigens, used to classify them for identification and epidemiology
2. Classifications of microbes grouped together because they display a common set of antigenic markers on their surfaces
3. Categories of pathogens, typically strains of a single species, that are identified by shared antigens on their cell walls or capsules

Etymology: Serogroups are the plural of "serogroup," a term that appears in biology and medicine rather than in ordinary speech. Its first element, "sero-," comes from "serum," the Latin word for the watery fluid left behind when blood clots. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scientists used "sero-" as a combining form for work on blood serum, and it became a standard building block in technical vocabulary. The second element, "group," traces a longer and more surprising path. It passed from Frankish "kruppa," meaning a rounded mass or lump, into Vulgar Latin, then into Italian "gruppo," which meant a cluster or knot of things. From Italian it reached French as "groupe" and then English. In English the word first referred to a painted or sculpted cluster of figures before it became a general term for any collection. Put together, "serogroup" means a set of microorganisms grouped by their reactions with antibodies found in serum. Its formation is a plain compound of a scientific prefix and an ordinary English noun, so its history is mostly the history of its two parts.