Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Anoxia
/əˈnɒksiə/noun
A complete absence of oxygen in body tissue or in a body of water.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
without, lacking
ὀξύς
oxýs
sharp, acid
Literally: “without the acid-maker”
The story of the word
The middle of the word preserves a chemist's error. Lavoisier named oxygen in the 1770s from ὀξύς and -γενής, acid-former, on the belief that every acid contained it; hydrochloric acid demolished the theory within decades, but the name had already set. Doctors keep anoxia apart from hypoxia, which is a shortage rather than a total absence, and the distinction matters at the bedside.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
oxygenhypoxiaoxymoronparoxysm
In a sentence
Summer runoff leaves the lake bottom in near-total anoxia by August.
The scan showed damage consistent with anoxia during the arrest.