vasopressor

Meanings

Adjective

• Of or relating to the constriction of blood vessels, which usually causes a rise in blood pressure.

Noun

• An agent that causes such constriction.

Origin

• To international scientific vocabulary from New Latin as a classical compound: vaso- + -press; the word is attested in its adjectival sense in a 1913 article of the Journal of the American Medical Association (1913;60[1]:47-48). The cognate word vasopressin seems to have arisen circa 1927; it is clearly inspired by its earlier cognate (surface analysis, vaso- + -press), and there are indications that it was coined in a certain pharmaceutical company's research laboratory, possibly with the plan to use it as the trade name for a preparation, but it became the common noun for the endogenous hormone (that is, antidiuretic hormone) immediately in the medical literature, and that company then used another name as its trade name. Compare also the morphologic parallels of angiotensin.