'antidyscratic' originates from Greek/Latin components: the prefix 'anti-' meaning 'against' and Late Latin/Greek 'dyskrasia' (from Greek 'dyskrasia'), where 'dys-' meant 'bad' and 'krasis' meant 'mixture' (referring to bodily humors).

'antidyscratic' was formed in English by combining 'anti-' with the medical term 'dyscratic' (itself from 'dyscrasia'); the underlying concept dates to Hippocratic/Galenic humoral theory and appears in medical writing in the 17th–19th centuries as an adjective and noun describing agents that oppose dyscrasia.

Initially, it specifically meant 'opposing a humoral imbalance' in a humoral medical context; over time the term became rare and its sense broadened in description to 'corrective' or 'restorative' in a general (often archaic) sense.