Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Apoplexy
/ˈæpəˌplɛksi/noun
Sudden loss of consciousness and movement caused by bleeding or blockage in the brain.
The Greek roots
ἀπό
apó
off, away
πλήσσω
plḗssō
to strike
Literally: “a striking down”
The story of the word
Greek physicians used ἀποπληξία for the thing that fells a person without warning, as though struck from outside. English stroke says exactly the same in native words, and for four hundred years the two ran side by side until stroke took the clinic and apoplexy drifted off into meaning rage. Someone apoplectic today is red-faced and shouting, not paralysed. The verb also gives plectrum, the small thing that strikes a string.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
plectrumcataplexyparaplegiahemiplegia
In a sentence
The parish register records his death from apoplexy at the age of fifty-one.
One look at the bill and my father was apoplectic.