Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Anemia
/əˈniːmiə/noun
A shortage of healthy red blood cells that leaves the body short of oxygen.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
without
αἷμα
haîma
blood
Literally: “without blood”
The story of the word
Greek ἀναιμία meant bloodlessness and appears in ancient medical writing for the state after heavy bleeding. The modern sense, too few or too weak red cells rather than too little blood, had to wait for the microscope and for nineteenth-century cell counts. English took the word through French anémie, which is why British spelling keeps the digraph in anaemia and American spelling drops it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- early 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
hemorrhagehemoglobinleukemiahemophilia
In a sentence
Her tiredness turned out to be iron-deficiency anemia, not overwork.