Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Atrophy
/ˈætrəfi/noun
The wasting away of a body part or tissue through disuse, denervation or lack of nourishment.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
τροφή
trophḗ
nourishment, food
Literally: “want of nourishment”
The story of the word
ἀτροφία in Greek medicine meant plain starvation of a part, and the modern sense keeps the picture even when the cause is a plaster cast rather than famine. Its opposite hypertrophy, growth beyond need, is what weight training produces. The same τροφή feeds a whole ecological vocabulary: autotroph, eutrophication, and the trophic levels of a food chain.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
hypertrophydystrophytrophiceutrophication
In a sentence
Six weeks in a cast left visible atrophy in the calf.