Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Arrhythmia
/əˈrɪðmiə/noun
An irregular heartbeat, whether too fast, too slow or simply uneven.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
without
ῥυθμός
rhythmós
measured flow, proportion
Literally: “without rhythm”
The story of the word
ῥυθμός did not start out musical. In early Greek it meant shape or proportion, and Democritus is reported to have used it for the form of atoms; only later did it settle onto measured time in music and verse. The doubled r in English marks a Greek rough breathing, the h-sound that ῥ carried at the start of a word, which is why the same thing happens in haemorrhage and diarrhea. Anatomy caught up with the word when Einthoven's string galvanometer made the beat visible around 1903.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
rhythmeurhythmichaemorrhageanaemia
In a sentence
The arrhythmia only shows up on a 24-hour tape, never in the clinic.
Atrial fibrillation is the arrhythmia most likely to throw a clot.