Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Akinesia
/ˌeɪkɪˈniːʒə/noun
Loss of the ability to begin voluntary movement, seen most often in Parkinson's disease.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
without, not
κίνησις
kínēsis
movement
Literally: “no movement”
The story of the word
It is not weakness. A patient with akinesia has the strength to walk and cannot start walking, and may unfreeze the instant a stripe is taped across the floor to step over. Kínēsis is the ordinary Greek noun for motion, and it built kinetic energy, cinema and the whole dyskinesia family that names movement going wrong from the other direction.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
kineticdyskinesiacinematelekinesis
In a sentence
The akinesia lifts about forty minutes after the morning dose.