Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Analgesic
/ˌænəlˈdʒiːzɪk/noun
A drug that relieves pain without putting the patient to sleep.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
not, without
ἄλγος
álgos
pain
Literally: “without pain”
The story of the word
ἀναλγησία meant insensibility to pain, and for Aristotle it was a defect of character rather than a mercy, the numbness of a man who fails to feel what he should. Medicine took the word in the nineteenth century, first for the effect and then for the bottle that produces it. The same ἄλγος sits inside nostalgia, coined in 1688 by a Swiss physician who was watching mercenaries sicken from homesickness far from their mountains.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
nostalgianeuralgiamyalgiaanalgesia
In a sentence
Take a mild analgesic and come back if the fever climbs.
Nobody has produced an analgesic that works without a downside.