noun

• 1Biochemistry
  Any of a large class of organic compounds with a characteristic molecular structure containing four rings of carbon atoms (three six-membered and one five). They include many hormones, alkaloids, and vitamins.

  ‘It is an important part of a healthy body, being a building block for steroids such as the sex hormones, and the hormones of the adrenal cortex.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Vitamin D is a steroid produced in the skin through a reaction between cholesterol and sunlight.’
  • ‘One of the steroids it produces is cortisol, which increases the supply of glucose in the blood.’
  • ‘Little is known about the steroids associated with these structures in hagfish.’
  • ‘So far, all the sex pheromones found in fish have turned out to be steroids and prostaglandins.’

  1. 1.1
     short for anabolic steroid
     ‘Well, this has a lot of eyes on Major League Baseball and its policy about drug testing and steroids.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘If he has a poor spring, some will doubt he even belongs in the big leagues without steroids.’
     • ‘These doses were comparable with the doses that many athletes who use steroids take.’
     • ‘Come up with a plan that gets guys off steroids and levels the playing field.’
     • ‘In the 1980s steroids were the rage among power athletes, like weightlifters and sprinters.’
     • ‘I contend that players were caught with steroids that had been in their bodies for a while.’
     • ‘When someone is taking steroids, he can lift hard one day, then come back and lift the next.’
     • ‘The commissioner's policy bans the use of steroids at the major league level.’
     • ‘Detecting successive generations of designer steroids will require a different type of sleuthing.’
     • ‘He took, supposedly or allegedly, this designer steroid that helped him run faster.’
     • ‘First there were the highly publicized congressional hearings on steroids in professional baseball.’
     • ‘He very quickly began to inject steroids, as he later admitted.’
     • ‘There's an interesting editorial in USA Today on steroids in professional sports.’
     • ‘Top sluggers are adding muscle and bulk by taking steroids and growth hormone.’
     • ‘You know using steroids or human growth hormone to add slabs of muscle is cheating.’
     • ‘All but four contained steroids, which in 14 cases were classified as potent or very potent.’
     • ‘Obviously testosterone levels also deplete and once you stop using steroids it can take a long time to get back to normal.’
     • ‘Players will be tested for steroids at least twice a season, including one random test.’
     • ‘He said he had been a gymnast as a teenager and wanted to get back into gymnastics as well as do some body building and the steroids would last him about five years.’
     • ‘This is not caused by an over use of steroids but by a growth or tumour on her pituitary gland.’