The Hammett approach, as a new deductive tool, was introduced to characterize the otherwise inaccessible minor protonation pathway of tenoxicam (1), the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. A total of eight compounds, constituting a systematic series of side chain-substituted analogues of tenoxicam and piroxicam (2), were synthesized and studied in terms of acidÀbase properties and Hammett constants to identify the ideal replacement of the unprotonated pyridin-2-yl group, a key moiety in both molecules. Hammett constants of the phenyl substituents have been found to be in a linear correlation with the experimental log K values of the enolate sites, the basic moiety of the extended conjugated system in this family of piroxicam derivatives. Then, a similar correlation was observed for the analogous tenoxicam derivatives. After identifying the 2-aza Hammett constant of the pyridin-2-yl group and the corresponding log K value, the site-specific acid -base properties of tenoxicam could be quantitated. This novel method is assessed to be a fine-tuning tool to find the ideal substituent by using analogue-based deductive method to obtain site-specific constants of the minor protonation/deprotonation pathway in drugs and biomolecules. The tenoxicam microconstant values indicate that the enolate moiety is of extremely low basicity (reflected by the log k O ¼ 3.70 and log k O N ¼ 1.09 values), which can, however, be interpreted in terms of the peculiar ring system and the overwhelming electron-withdrawing effects of the adjacent heteroatoms. A diagram depicting the pH-dependent distribution of 1 microspecies is also presented.