Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Anabolic
/ˌænəˈbɒlɪk/adjective
Promoting the building of tissue, especially the laying down of muscle protein.
The Greek roots
ἀνά
aná
up, upward
βάλλειν
bállein
to throw
Literally: “thrown up, built up”
The story of the word
Physiologists split metabolism into two halves in the 1870s: anabolism builds molecules up, catabolism tears them down, and life is the balance between them. The steroid sense arrived in the 1940s once testosterone derivatives could be made in quantity. That same βάλλειν sits in problem, parable, symbol and devil, the last from διάβολος, the one who throws accusations across.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1876
Same family
catabolicmetabolismparablesymbol
In a sentence
Two of the sprinters tested positive for an anabolic agent.