Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Aphasia
/əˈfeɪʒə/noun
Loss or impairment of the ability to produce or understand language, usually after damage to the brain.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
φάσις
phásis
utterance, speech
Literally: “speechlessness”
The story of the word
Greek ἀφασία meant plain speechlessness, and the Sceptic philosophers used it as a technical term for the refusal to assert anything at all. Broca called the disorder aphemia in 1861; Trousseau objected that aphemia leaned on a Greek word for ill repute and proposed aphasia in 1864, which won. What is lost is language, not intelligence and not the voice, a distinction families still find hard to hold on to.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1860s
Same family
dysphasiapropheteuphemismblasphemy
In a sentence
After the stroke he had the words in his head and no way to get them out.