Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Estrogen
/ˈɛstrədʒən/noun
Any of the steroid hormones, chiefly estradiol, that drive female sexual development and regulate the menstrual cycle.
The Greek roots
οἶστρος
oîstros
gadfly, frenzy
-γενής
-genḗs
producing
Literally: “producing frenzy”
The story of the word
Oistros was the biting fly that maddened cattle, and Aeschylus uses it for the gadfly that drove Io across the world. Zoologists took it for oestrus, the period when an animal is receptive to mating, and the hormone was named in the 1920s for producing that state. American spelling dropped the oe, which hides the fly completely.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
oestrusandrogenestradioloestrous
In a sentence
Estrogen levels fall sharply at menopause.
The trial compared transdermal estrogen with the oral form.