'anticardiac' originates from Greek and New Latin roots, specifically combining the prefix 'anti-' (Greek 'anti-', meaning 'against') and 'cardiac' (from Greek 'kardia', meaning 'heart').

'anticardiac' developed by combining the prefix 'anti-' with the adjective 'cardiac' (which came into English via Late Latin 'cardiacus' from Greek 'kardia'), forming a compound meaning 'against the heart' in modern English usage.

Initially, elements like 'cardiac' referred simply to 'of the heart'; with the addition of 'anti-' the compound came to mean 'opposing or inhibiting heart action', a specialized/medical sense.