Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Thrombin
/ˈθrɒmbɪn/noun
The enzyme that turns fibrinogen into fibrin and so makes blood clot.
The Greek roots
θρόμβος
thrómbos
clot, lump
Literally: “clot substance”
Follow a root:θρόμβος4 words
The story of the word
Alexander Schmidt named it in the 1870s while working out the chemistry of coagulation; the -in is ordinary chemists' suffix, not Greek. Thrombos in Hippocratic writing was any curdled lump, clotted milk included, before it narrowed to blood. Thrombosis, thrombocyte and the coronary thrombosis on a death certificate all descend from the same lump.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
thrombosisthrombocytethrombusantithrombotic
In a sentence
Surgeons pack the wound with a thrombin sponge when pressure alone will not stop the bleeding.