Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Antigen
/ˈæntɪdʒən/noun
Any substance the immune system recognises as foreign and responds to by making antibodies.
The Greek roots
ἀντί
antí
against, opposite
-γενής
-genḗs
producing, giving rise to
Literally: “producer of the thing that opposes”
The story of the word
The word is a squeeze of antibody generator, put together in German around 1900 as immunology found its vocabulary. The logic runs backwards from how it sounds: an antigen does not fight anything, it provokes the fight. Blood groups A, B and O are named for the antigens sitting on the red cell surface, which is why the wrong transfusion is dangerous.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
antibodypathogengeneticsantithesis
In a sentence
The rapid test looks for a viral antigen, not for the antibodies you make against it.