Words / H / Medicine

half-life

noun/ˈhɑːf laɪf/

B1CEFR level
30/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

The time taken for a drug’s concentration to fall by half.

Its short half-life means dosing three times a day.

Similar: decay period

Origin: from 'half' + 'life', via physics.

Topic: Pharmacology in Medical English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More medicine words: Pharmacology