Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Carcinoma
/ˌkɑːrsɪˈnoʊmə/noun
A cancer arising in the epithelial tissue that lines organs, skin and glands.
The Greek roots
καρκίνος
karkínos
crab
-ωμα
-ōma
growth, tumour
Literally: “crab-growth”
The story of the word
Greek physicians called a hard tumour καρκίνος, a crab, and Galen explained the image by the swollen veins radiating from the mass like legs. Latin translated the metaphor instead of borrowing the word, which is why English ended up with both cancer and carcinoma for one idea. Modern medicine has split them: carcinoma is now the precise term for cancers of epithelium, roughly nine in ten of all cases.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cancercarcinogensarcomamelanoma
In a sentence
The biopsy came back as a basal cell carcinoma, the slowest and most forgiving kind.