'urease-activating' originates from modern scientific English, combining 'urease' and the present participle 'activating' from 'activate', where 'urea-' refers to urea and '-ase' denotes an enzyme, and 'activate' meant 'to make active'.

'urease' was coined in the 20th century to name the enzyme that hydrolyzes urea; 'activate' comes from Latin 'activare' (related to 'actus') and the present participle form 'activating' was appended to form a descriptive compound, resulting in 'urease-activating'.

Initially, 'activate' meant 'to make active' in a general sense, but in modern biochemical compounds like 'urease-activating' it evolved to mean 'specifically causing activation of the enzyme urease'.