Etymology

dickkopf

dick·kopf
D2I1C3K5K5O1P3F4

Today it means: Any of a family of glycoproteins that are involved in the development of the embryo. Full definition →

First used 1998German Dickkopf
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The story

  1. German · borrowed fromDickkopf“stubborn person”
  2. English todaydickkopf

Borrowed from German Dickkopf (“stubborn person”, literally “thick head”), from the fact that Dickkopf-related protein 1 (DKK1), one of the dickkopf proteins, was found to be required for head formation in embryos. The word was coined by Andrei Glinka, Wei Wu, Hajo Delius, A. Paula Monaghan, Claudia Blumenstock, and Christof Niehrs in a 1998 article published in Nature: see the quotation.

First known use, by meaning

  • from 1998 Any of a family of glycoproteins that are involved in the development of the embryo.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.