Anergia
/æˈnɜːrdʒiə/noun
A marked lack of energy, counted among the negative symptoms in psychiatry.
The Greek roots
Literally: “without work”
The story of the word
A want of ἔργον, work: in psychiatry the flat absence of energy that belongs with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and with severe depression, where the patient is less unwilling than unpowered. Immunology uses the near-identical anergy for a different failure, an immune system that will not react to an antigen it should recognise, a sense Clemens von Pirquet set out in the 1900s alongside his new word allergy. Both are built the same way and neither has anything to do with the other.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
In a sentence
The notes recorded anergia and blunted affect rather than low mood.
Anergia is what keeps someone in a chair all afternoon with the television off.