Definition of ADJUVANT

adjuvant

Plural: adjuvants

Noun

  • A substance that enhances another's effect; an assistant.
  • an additive that enhances the effectiveness of medical treatment
  • Someone or (more commonly) something that assists, facilitates, or helps; an aid, an assistant, a helper.
  • An additive (often a separate product) that enhances the efficacy of a pesticide, but has little or no pesticidal effect itself.
  • Someone or (more commonly) something that assists, facilitates, or helps; an aid, an assistant, a helper.
  • A substance enhancing the immune response to an antigen.
  • Someone or (more commonly) something that assists, facilitates, or helps; an aid, an assistant, a helper.
  • A form of therapy or treatment which is additional or supplementary to another, or which enhances the effectiveness of another.
  • Someone or (more commonly) something that assists, facilitates, or helps; an aid, an assistant, a helper.
  • An additive which aids or modifies the action of the principal ingredient of a drug.

Adjective Satellite

  • furnishing added support
    • "an adjuvant discipline to forms of mysticism"
  • enhancing the action of a medical treatment
    • "the adjuvant action of certain bacteria"

Adj

  • Providing assistance or help; assistive, facilitative, helpful.
  • Enhancing the immune response to an antigen; also, containing a substance having such an effect.
  • Of a form of therapy or treatment: additional, supplementary; specifically (oncology), of a cancer treatment: given after removal of a primary tumour.

Examples

  • A blank tile is the perfect adjuvant for turning a mediocre rack into a bingo.

Origin / Etymology

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).

Synonyms

accessory, adjunct, ancillary, appurtenant, auxiliary, accessory#Noun, assisting#Adjective, attendant#Noun, auxiliary#Adjective, complementary#Adjective, contributory#Adjective, helping#Adjective, supporting#Adjective

Scrabble Score: 19

adjuvant: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
adjuvant: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
adjuvant: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 24

adjuvant: valid Words With Friends Word