Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Oxytocin
/ˌɒksɪˈtoʊsɪn/noun
A hormone produced in the hypothalamus that triggers uterine contraction and milk ejection, and shapes social bonding.
The Greek roots
ὀξύς
oxús
sharp, swift
τόκος
tókos
childbirth
Literally: “swift birth”
The story of the word
Henry Dale named it in 1906 for the one thing he could see it do: speed up labour. The bonding and trust literature arrived seventy years later, which is why the popular nickname has nothing to do with the actual word. Tokos also meant interest on a loan, money giving birth to money, a pun Aristotle used to condemn usury.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1906
Same family
oxygenoxymorontocologyparoxysm
In a sentence
The midwife hung a syntocinon drip, the synthetic form of oxytocin.
Headlines call it the cuddle hormone, which oversells forty years of mixed results.