Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Atherosclerosis
/ˌæθəroʊskləˈroʊsɪs/noun
The build-up of fatty plaque inside artery walls, narrowing and stiffening them.
The Greek roots
ἀθάρη
athárē
porridge, gruel
σκλήρωσις
sklḗrōsis
hardening
Literally: “gruel hardening”
The story of the word
Open a diseased artery and the core of the plaque is soft and yellow, closer to porridge than to anything you would expect in a vessel, which is exactly what ἀθάρη means. Felix Marchand proposed atherosclerosis in 1904 to pull that fatty lesion apart from the general stiffening covered by the older word arteriosclerosis. The distinction still earns its keep: one names a disease of cholesterol in the vessel wall, the other any hardened artery at all.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
atheromasclerosisarteriosclerosissclera
In a sentence
The scan showed atherosclerosis in both carotids.
Atherosclerosis begins decades before anyone notices it.