'anticodon' originates from the Greek prefix 'anti-' (from Greek ἀντί) meaning 'against' or 'opposite', combined with the modern genetic term 'codon' (coined from 'code' with the Greek-derived suffix '-on').

'anticodon' was formed in the mid-20th century by combining the prefix 'anti-' with the newly coined biological term 'codon' (the term 'codon' itself was introduced in the 1950s as a unit of the genetic code, derived from 'code' + '-on').

Initially, the term referred specifically to the three-nucleotide sequence on tRNA complementary to an mRNA codon; this technical meaning has remained stable in molecular biology.