'pro-' originates from Latin 'pro' meaning 'for' or 'forward'; 'nociceptive' is derived from Latin root 'nocere' meaning 'to harm' via the Neo-Latin formation 'nociception' (the physiological term referring to detection of harmful stimuli).

'nociceptive' developed from the noun 'nociception' (a 20th-century scientific coinage from Neo-Latin), which itself is built on Latin 'nocere' ('to harm'); the compound adjective 'pro-nociceptive' is formed in modern biomedical English by prefixing Latin-derived 'pro-' to 'nociceptive'.

The Latin root originally meant 'to harm'; in modern scientific usage the derived terms came to denote the sensory processes related to harmful stimuli ('nociception') and 'pro-nociceptive' now specifically means 'promoting those processes' rather than simply 'harmful'.