antibiotic

Pluralantibiotics

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A substance that destroys or inhibits the growth of bacteria and similar microorganisms, generally carried through the body by the lymphatic system.

   Her doctor prescribed an antibiotic after the wound became infected.

   Overusing antibiotics can lead to resistant strains of bacteria.

   Similarantibacterial

   Note

   A pharmacologist's count noun that moves easily between singular and plural. A doctor prescribes an antibiotic, and Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times in 2009, faulted industrial agriculture because it overuses antibiotics. Clinical writing favors the phrase antibiotic of choice for the drug selected against a particular infection. The word came from French antibiotique and splits into anti- plus -biotic.

2. 2
   adjective

   Relating to antibiotics or to their action against bacteria.

   The ointment's antibiotic action kept the cut from becoming infected.

   Researchers studied the antibiotic effects of several soil fungi.

   Similarantibacterial, antimicrobial

   Note

   Before a noun, as in antibiotic action or antibiotic effects, this adjective is hard to tell apart from the drug noun used as a modifier, and little depends on the difference. It can also be graded: more antibiotic, most antibiotic. Those forms suit comparisons of how strongly one compound acts against bacteria compared with another.

3. 3
   adjectiveobsolete

   Concerning the theory that there is no life anywhere other than on Earth.

   Note

   The same parts read another way. Here anti- plus -biotic means opposition to life beyond Earth, the position that no other world is inhabited. The sense is obsolete, so use it only when writing about that history, and explain it when you do. A modern reader will hear the medical adjective first, and an unexplained "antibiotic view" will be misread.

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