Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Arthralgia
/ɑːrˈθrældʒə/noun
Pain in a joint without the swelling and heat that would make it arthritis.
The Greek roots
ἄρθρον
árthron
joint
ἄλγος
álgos
pain
Literally: “joint pain”
The story of the word
The distinction from arthritis is doing real work: pain alone narrows a diagnosis differently from pain with inflammation. ἄρθρον is a joint, a limb, or anything that fits into something else, and Greek grammarians borrowed it for the definite article, the small word that joints a sentence together. ἄλγος is the second half of nostalgia, coined in 1688 for the homesickness of Swiss mercenaries and treated at the time as a genuine disease.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
arthritisneuralgianostalgiaanalgesic
In a sentence
The arthralgia came on with the fever and went when it broke.
Widespread arthralgia sends more people to rheumatology than anything else.