Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Chlorosis
/kləˈroʊsɪs/noun
The yellowing of plant leaves caused by a failure to make enough chlorophyll.
The Greek roots
χλωρός
chlōrós
pale green, yellow-green
-ωσις
-ōsis
condition, state
Literally: “green condition”
The story of the word
Before botany claimed it the word named a human disease, the green sickness diagnosed in young women from the 1500s onward and now generally read as iron-deficiency anaemia. χλωρός covers ground English splits up: new shoots, pale honey, and the greenish pallor of someone badly frightened. Chlorine got the same root in 1810, named by Davy for the colour of the gas.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
chlorophyllchlorinechloroformchloroplast
In a sentence
Chlorosis between the leaf veins usually means the soil is too alkaline for the plant to take up iron.