Word.ws English Dictionary

hirudinin

hirudinin noun: an anticoagulant secretion of leeches.

Noun

hirudinin (uncountable)

  1. An anticoagulant secretion of leeches.
    • In bloodsucking leeches, the stomach becomes a spacious crop with lateral, paired caeca for the storage of food between feedings, and the saliva contains the anticoagulant hirudinin, which keeps the food fluid until digestion.1988, Gerald D. Schmidt, Marvin C. Meyer & O. Wilford Olsenʼs Essentials of Parasitology, Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown, page 184
    • Secretion of the anticoagulant hirudinin (a specific, highly effective thrombin inhibitor) at the bite site by the leech assures oozing or dripping of blood from the bite well after the leech has completed its meal.1989, Robert Goldsmith, Donald Heyneman, Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, Norwalk, Connecticut/San Mateo, California: Appleton & Lange, page 759

Origin of hirudinin

From Latin hirūdin- (“leech”) + -in.

Questions about hirudinin

What does hirudinin mean?
Hirudinin means an anticoagulant secretion of leeches.
What part of speech is hirudinin?
Hirudinin is a noun.

Words near hirudinin in the dictionary

  1. hirudine
  2. hirudinean
  3. hirudineans
  4. hirudiniasis
  5. hirudiniculture
  6. hirudinin
  7. hirudinised
  8. hirudinization
  9. hirudinize
  10. hirudinized
  11. hirudinizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hirudinin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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