Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Apnea
/ˈæpniə/noun
A temporary stopping of breathing.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
πνοή
pnoḗ
breath, breathing
Literally: “no breathing”
The story of the word
The Hippocratic writings already use ἄπνοια for breathlessness. Modern medicine narrowed it to a measurable pause, above all the repeated collapse of the airway in sleep apnoea, counted per hour to grade severity. Freedivers use the same word for their sport, where the entire discipline consists of not breathing.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
dyspneapneumoniapneumatic
In a sentence
The sleep study recorded thirty episodes of apnea an hour.
She trains in static apnea twice a week.