Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Androgen
/ˈændrədʒən/noun
Any hormone, testosterone chief among them, that drives male physical characteristics.
The Greek roots
ἀνήρ, ἀνδρός
anḗr, andrós
man, male
-γενής
-genḗs
producing, giving rise to
Literally: “male-producing”
The story of the word
Testosterone and its relatives were grouped under one label in the 1930s, when the sex hormones were first isolated and needed collective names. The Greek distinction is sharp: ἀνήρ is a man as opposed to a woman, while ἄνθρωπος is a human as opposed to an animal, and androgen picks the first. Oestrogen was built on the same plan from οἶστρος, the gadfly whose sting sent cattle into a frenzy.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1930s
Same family
androgynypolyandrymisandryandroid
In a sentence
Androgen levels drop slowly with age rather than falling off a cliff.
The clinic screened him for an androgen-secreting tumour.