AstraZeneca

A1S1T1R1A1Z10E1N1E1C3A1

proper noun

The COVID-19 vaccine made by the AstraZeneca company.

OriginAncient Greek ᾰ̓́στρον →
Less commonScrabble 22
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Meanings

proper nounAstraZeneca (countable and uncountable, plural AstraZenecas)

plural AstraZenecas

  1. countableneologismuncountableThe COVID-19 vaccine made by the AstraZeneca company.

    Have you been injected with AstraZeneca, la la la la la?

    2021 April 1, 5:10 from the start, in No More Jockeys, season 4, episode 5, spoken by Tim Key
    3 more examples

    Just a few weeks ago at TVO.org, I wrote about the anecdotes I’d been hearing of people who were outside of the targeted age range getting AstraZeneca doses at pharmacies lest vaccine spoil.

    2021 April 15, Matt Gurney, “Please put a shot of AstraZeneca in my arm”, in TVO Today

    I am over the age of 60. I have a choice of AstraZeneca, AstraZeneca or AstraZeneca - or die of Covid.

    2021 July 2, The NT News, Darwin, page 22, column 2

    "Mixing and matching, so for example, two AstraZenecas, and then a Pfizer, or even one AstraZeneca and a Pfizer, actually gives a really good immune response," he said.

    2021 October 27, John Skerritt, quotee, “COVID Pfizer vaccine booster shots have been approved — here is what we know so far”, in ABC News (Australia)

Origin

  1. Ancient Greekᾰ̓́στρον“star”
  2. EnglishAstraZeneca

From AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company that created the vaccine. The company name was formed by the merger of Astra AB and Zeneca. Astra is from Ancient Greek ᾰ̓́στρον (ắstron, “star”), whereas Zeneca, the company stated, “is an invented name, created by an agency instructed to find a name which began with a letter from either the top or bottom of the alphabet and was phonetically memorable, of no more than three syllables and did not have an offensive meaning in any language.”

More words from Ancient Greek

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

AstraZeneca. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/AstraZeneca

MLA

“AstraZeneca.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/AstraZeneca. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “AstraZeneca,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/AstraZeneca.

Source: AstraZeneca on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.