Other forms: contraceptions
Contraception is birth control, to put it bluntly; the general term for the use of a number of devices or acts that prevent impregnation during intercourse.
The word is formed by mashing together the Latin word contra, meaning "against" and a shortened form of the old French word concepcion, meaning "conception" — in other words: "against conception." Like so many scientific terms it was first coined in the nineteenth century, when the science of birth control was beginning to be seriously considered. Contraceptives — birth control devices — that had been around in cruder forms, began to be mass-produced and eventually socially accepted.