Link Centre Dictionary

adjuvant

ad·ju·vant

UK/ˈæd͡ʒʊv(ə)nt/ US/ˈæd͡ʒəv(ə)nt/ uncommon archaic formal
noun (1) adjective (2)

noun

1.

an additive that enhances the effectiveness of medical treatment

adjective

1.

relating to something that is added but is not essential

  • “an ancillary pump”
  • “an adjuvant discipline to forms of mysticism”
  • “The mind and emotions are auxilliary to each other”
Synonyms
Similar
2.

enhancing the action of a medical treatment

  • “the adjuvant action of certain bacteria”
Similar

Origin

Learned borrowing from Latin adiuvant-, adjuvant- + English -ant (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘exhibiting a condition or process’; and forming agent nouns). Adiuvant-, adjuvant- are oblique stems of adiuvāns, adjuvāns (“assisting, helping”), the present active participle of adiuvō (“to assist, help; to be useful; etc.”), from ad- (“prefix meaning ‘to; toward’”) + iuvō (“to aid, help; to save”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ewH- (“to assist, help; to save”)). Adjective sense 3 (“of a form of therapy or treatment: additional, supplementary”) and noun sense 1.4 (“additive which aids or modifies the action of the principal ingredient of a drug”) are possibly derived from French adjuvant (adjective, noun).

Phrases

  • adjuvant therapy
  • Freund's adjuvant

Related words

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.