prophylaxis
Americannoun
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Medicine/Medical.
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the preventing of disease.
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the prevention of a specific disease, as by studying the biological behavior, transmission, etc., of its causative agent and applying a series of measures against it.
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prophylactic treatment, as the cleaning of the teeth by a dentist or dental hygienist.
noun
Etymology
Origin of prophylaxis
1835–45; < New Latin < Greek pro- pro- 2 + phýlaxis a watching, guarding, equivalent to phylak- (base of phylássein to guard) + -sis -sis
Explanation
Prophylaxis refers to all the things people do to prevent disease. Prophylaxis is part of medicine. If you've ever heard of someone using prophylactics to prevent a disease — often a sexually transmitted disease — then you have a clue to the meaning of prophylaxis, which refers to the prevention of disease. Anything you do to stay healthy and keep illness at bay would be categorized as prophylaxis. Antibiotic prophylaxis refers to giving patients antibiotics to prevent a bacterial infection, instead of curing an infection that already exists.
Vocabulary lists containing prophylaxis
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
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Cheaper by the Dozen
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I hoped the solution would be my Yellow Card, also known as the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis.
From Washington Post • Dec. 29, 2021
The International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis, known to many as the carte jaune or yellow card, was originally created in the mid 1930s by the World Health Organization.
From New York Times • Dec. 22, 2020
Those who knowingly have sex with someone who has an HIV-positive diagnosis also can take Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, a pill taken every day that prevents them from getting the virus.
From US News • Nov. 17, 2015
Prophylaxis is common with, for example, malaria drugs for travelers making brief sojourns in the tropics.
From New York Times • Nov. 29, 2010
Thus, the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis started as an avowed enemy of the social diseases and so it has continued to the present.
From Sex-education A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human life by Bigelow, Maurice Alpheus
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
