'antiferroelectric' is formed from the combining elements 'anti-' + 'ferro-' + 'electric'. 'anti-' originates from Greek 'anti' meaning 'against' or 'opposite', 'ferro-' is from Latin 'ferrum' (iron) but used in scientific formation to denote 'ferro-' as in ferromagnetism/ferroelectricity (spontaneous alignment), and 'electric' originates from Greek 'ēlektron' (amber) via Latin/Modern scientific usage.

The modern scientific compound developed by combining established scientific prefixes and roots: 'ferro-' was extended from references to iron ('ferrum') to name phenomena with spontaneous alignment (e.g., 'ferromagnetism', 'ferroelectricity'), and 'anti-' was prefixed to indicate the opposite ordering; together they produced 'antiferroelectric' in materials-science usage in the 20th century.

Initially, 'ferro-' literally referred to iron, but in physics it came to mean 'spontaneously aligned ordering'; 'antiferroelectric' therefore originally meant 'opposite of ferroelectric' and has come to refer more specifically to materials whose neighboring dipoles are oppositely aligned, canceling net polarization.