Arteriosclerosis

The story of the word

Jean Lobstein coined the term in Strasbourg in 1833 for arteries gone stiff and thick-walled. Ἀρτηρία first meant the windpipe, and Greek anatomists extended it to those vessels because arteries in a corpse are empty, which they read as proof that the tubes carried air; the old derivation from ἀήρ and τηρεῖν, air-keeper, is a guess built on that mistake. Arteriosclerosis is the wide word, and atherosclerosis, the version with fatty plaque in it, is the one that causes heart attacks.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English

First recorded

19th century