From Latin serum (“whey”). Cognates include French sérum, Spanish suero, Italian siere, siero, Portuguese soro. Doublet of suero.
serum (countable and uncountable, plural serums or sera)
- The clear yellowish liquid obtained upon separating whole blood into its solid and liquid components after it has been allowed to clot.
- Synonym: blood serum
- Blood serum from the tissues of immunized animals, containing antibodies and used to transfer immunity to another individual.
- A watery liquid from animal tissue, especially one that moistens the surface of serous membranes or that is exuded by such membranes when they become inflamed, such as in edema or a blister.
- The watery portion of certain animal fluids like blood, milk, etc; whey.
- (skincare) An intensive moisturising product to be applied after cleansing but before a general moisturiser.
- (medicine prepared from animal fluids): antiserum
yellowish fluid obtained from blood
blood serum containing antibodies
— see antiserum
watery fluid from animal tissue
watery portion of certain animal fluids
- “serum”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “serum”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “serum”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- semur, resum, Reums, Mureș, Remus, merus, muser, Muser, murse, mures, Sumer, Esrum
From Proto-Italic *serom, from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to flow, run”); see also Sanskrit सर (sara, “flowing”), Sanskrit सार (sā́ra, “curd, cream”), Sanskrit सारण (sāraṇa, “flowing, buttermilk”), and Ancient Greek ὁρός (horós, “whey, curd, semen”).
serum n (genitive serī); second declension
- whey
c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE,
Virgil,
Georgics 3.404–406:
- Nec tibi cūra canum fuerit postrēma, sed ūnā
vēlōcis Spartae catulōs ācremque Molossum
pāsce serō pinguī.- Nor let the concern for your dogs be the last, but in the same way
the brave Molossan and the whelps of the swift Spartan
feed with fat whey.
- (by extension) some other watery liquid
c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE,
Catullus,
Carmina 80:
- Quid dīcam, Gellī, quārē rosea ista labella
hībernā fīant candidiōra nive,
māne domō cum exīs et cum tē octāva quiēte
ē mollī longō suscitat hōra diē?
Nesciŏquid certest: an vērē fāma susurrat
grandia tē mediī tenta vorāre virī?
Sīc certest: clāmant Victōris rupta miselli
īlia, et ēmulsō barba notāta serō.- What shall I say, Gellius, how these rosy lips
are whiter than wintery snow,
when you walk out of the house when the eighth hour
rouses you from soft rest in the long day?
Something's sure: perhaps your reputation whispers truthfully
that you devour the large protuberance of a man's middle?
So is it certain: thus the broken loins of the poor Victor
cry, and the beard marked with the milked-out semen.
Second-declension noun (neuter).
sērum
- nominative neuter singular of sērus
- “serum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “serum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- serum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- serum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.