Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
lincomycin

lincomycin

8.1
A medicine that kills bacteria used when penicillin does not work
  • noun
  • /ˌlɪŋ.kəˈmaɪ.sɪn/
  • Specialized
translation icon : lincomicina
  • The doctor prescribed lincomycin to treat the infection that didn't respond to penicillin.

Examples

  • An ear swab culture yielded Staphylococcus aureus, which was sensitive to lincomycin and vancomycin.

    Academic text (2006)

  • Patients allergic to penicillin can often be treated effectively with lincomycin.

  • After testing, the lab confirmed that the bacteria were sensitive to lincomycin.

Synonyms

Lincocin
vslincomycin
  • Specialized
8.3

A medicine that kills bacteria and treats infections when penicillin cannot be used

is the generic drug name rather than the commercial brand

Surface Forms

lincomycin singular
lincomycins plural

Morphology

lincomycin = linco + mycin

A technical antibiotic name built from a strain/place element + the combining form '-mycin' and is not transparently interpretable by an average B1 learner.

Etymology

Lincomycin comes from the place name Lincoln, where the bacteria that made the drug were first found, plus the common drug ending -mycin. The ending -mycin appears in many antibiotic names like streptomycin, so lincomycin can be remembered as 'the antibiotic from Lincoln', which explains why the medicine has that name.