noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A substance that is a product of ordinary metabolism and not produced for a specific purpose, but acts like a hormone in modifying the activity of some distant organ, as in the case of carbon dioxide acting on the respiratory centre.

Etymology

From para- + hormone.

Related phrases

carbon dioxide

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