What does "antihistamine" mean?

A drug or substance that counteracts the effects of a histamine. Commonly used to alleviate the symptoms of hay fever and other allergies.

What is a synonym for "antihistamine"?

Common synonyms include: antihistaminic.

Pronounced //ˌæn.tiˈhɪs.tə.miːn//.

//ˌæn.tiˈhɪs.tə.miːn// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Noun

1
A drug or substance that counteracts the effects of a histamine. Commonly used to alleviate the symptoms of hay fever and other allergies.
"Perhaps the most striking method of demonstrating the effect of antihistamine substances is to use them to protect guinea-pigs against the action of histamine sprayed into the air from an atomizer."
2
a medicine used to treat allergies and hypersensitive reactions and colds; works by counteracting the effects of histamine on a receptor site wordnet

"Would you like an antihistamine?"

From anti- + histamine.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.