Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cataract
/ˈkætərækt/noun
A clouding of the eye's lens that blurs vision, and, separately, a large waterfall.
The Greek roots
κατά
katá
down
ἀράσσω
arássō
to strike, dash
Literally: “dashing down”
The story of the word
Καταρράκτης covered a waterfall and also a portcullis, the grating dropped to close a gate, and the eye sense comes from the second image, a barrier coming down in front of the sight. Medieval Latin cataracta carried both meanings into Europe. Ancient and medieval doctors thought the obstruction was a fluid that had run down between iris and lens, and the lens itself was not identified as the site until the seventeenth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
catalystcataclysmcatastrophe
In a sentence
The cataract operation took twenty minutes and he read a newspaper the next morning.