Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Aorta
/eɪˈɔːrtə/noun
The main artery carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body.
The Greek roots
ἀορτή
aortḗ
strap, thing hung up
Literally: “the thing hung up”
Follow a root:ἀορτή1 word
The story of the word
Aristotle fixed the name, and it describes a dissection: the great vessel appears to hang the heart from above, the way a strap holds a bag. Before him the noun meant the strap of a quiver or a scabbard, and Hippocratic writers had used ἀορταί for the bronchial tubes. The term was still moving when Aristotle nailed it down.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
aorticmeteor
In a sentence
The surgeon clamped the aorta for four minutes, which felt considerably longer.