Talk:steroid

RFV discussion: April–May 2021

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steroid

Rfv-sense "(sports, US) Any chemical compound used to enhance athletic performance.". This is so broad that it would include so-called "doping".__Gamren (talk) 17:53, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't it? Whenever I hear about athletes "doping", I assume that what they're doping with is steroids. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:44, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja Doping can also be stimulants, defined by Wikipedia as "... drugs that usually act on the central nervous system to modulate mental function and behavior, increasing an individual's sense of excitement and decreasing the sensation of fatigue.", e.g. meth to take a familiar example. Actually, before looking it up I thought doping referred only to that. Anabolic steroids and stimulants of this type fulfill completely different functions, and I wouldn't personally have found it natural to consider them as constituting a class.__Gamren (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Then there's blood doping, which can include transfusions of the athlete's own blood. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

I think there is no difference between the senses used in bodybuilding and in competitive sports. BTW, a steroid (in this sense) is not any anabolic hormone, but specifically an anabolic steroid, of which term steroid in this sense is a shortening. (Human growth hormone is also an anabolic hormone, but not a steroid.) For some reason, when an athlete has been caught on illicit use, they are usually reported as having used steroids, the plural form, just like people are said to use drugs even if they use no other drug than, say, cocaine.  --Lambiam 21:31, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I think the inevitable has happened, with steroid coming to refer to any performance-enhancing drug, two syllables winning out over the seven of performance-enhancing drug. DCDuring (talk) 15:00, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Can you offer us citations attesting uses of this more general sense, in which drugs are referred to as steroids, although unambiguously not steroids in the sense of organic chemistry?  --Lambiam 11:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 23:23, 24 May 2021 (UTC)