An antiseptic is a substance that kills germs or stops them from growing, especially on skin or wounds.
From Greek "anti" meaning "against" and "sēptikos" meaning "putrefying" or "making rotten." It originally referred to preventing decay and infection in flesh before modern medicine fully understood germs.
Antiseptic literally means “against rotting,” which shows how people first thought of infection as meat going bad. The word hints at a time before microscopes, when doctors could see decay but not the tiny life causing it.
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