Etymology

-cillin

Today it means: Used to form names of generic penicillin antibiotic drugs. Full definition →

English penicillin ← Latin pēnicillum ← Proto-Italic *peznis
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*pes-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*pes-ni-s
  3. Proto-Italic*peznis
  4. Latinpēnis
  5. Latinpēniculus
  6. Latinpēnicillum
  7. Englishpenicillin
  8. English today-cillin

From penicillin.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.