Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Asthenia
/æsˈθiːniə/noun
Abnormal physical weakness or loss of strength.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
σθένος
sthénos
strength, might
Literally: “without strength”
The story of the word
σθένος is Homer's word for the raw strength of a fighter or a bull. Medicine turned its negative into a diagnosis: John Brown's system in the 1780s divided every illness in the world into sthenic and asthenic, over-excited or under-excited, and treated the second with brandy and opium. The system collapsed, the word did not. Calisthenics keeps the positive form, joined to κάλλος, beauty: strength that looks good.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
neurastheniamyastheniacalisthenics
In a sentence
Weeks after the fever she still had the asthenia, unable to climb a flight of stairs.