Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cardiomyopathy
/ˌkɑrdioʊmaɪˈɒpəθi/noun
Disease of the heart muscle itself, in which the walls of the chambers thicken, thin or stiffen.
The Greek roots
καρδία
kardía
heart
μῦς
mŷs
muscle
πάθος
páthos
suffering, disease
Literally: “heart muscle suffering”
The story of the word
Three pieces stacked in order: heart, muscle, suffering. Cardiologists needed the term in the 1950s to separate diseases of the muscle from the far commoner failures of the plumbing and the wiring. Its usefulness is largely negative, since it tells you where the trouble is not.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1950s
Same family
cardiacmyocardiumpericardiummyopathy
In a sentence
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the reason young athletes are screened with an echocardiogram.
The cardiomyopathy was traced to a single inherited gene.