Cholera
/ˈkɒlərə/noun
An acute intestinal infection caused by Vibrio cholerae, causing violent watery diarrhoea and rapid dehydration.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the bile disease”
The story of the word
Hippocratic writers used χολέρα for a violent complaint of vomiting and purging, but not for the disease the word now names. The derivation is contested: from χολή, bile, one of the four humours, or from χολάδες, the guts. English had the word from the late 1300s for a bilious attack, and the modern sense arrived with the pandemic that reached Europe from Bengal in the 1820s. An old word suddenly acquired a far deadlier referent, and John Snow's Broad Street pump investigation of 1854 followed.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Cholera can kill a healthy adult in a day if the fluids are not replaced.