Vasopressor

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An agent that causes such constriction; especially, a medication that tends to increase blood pressure.
  2. 2
    any agent that produces vasoconstriction and a rise in blood pressure (usually understood as increased arterial pressure) wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to the constriction of blood vessels, which usually causes a rise in blood pressure. not-comparable

Etymology

To international scientific vocabulary from New Latin as a classical compound: vaso- + press + -or; 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 + -in), 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.

Related phrases

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