Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Chronic
/ˈkrɒnɪk/adjective
Lasting a long time or coming back again and again, especially of an illness.
The Greek roots
χρόνος
chrónos
time
Literally: “having to do with time”
Follow a root:χρόνος9 words
The story of the word
Greek χρονικός meant nothing more than "concerning time". Medicine narrowed it: Hippocratic writers already sorted diseases into the sharp and sudden and the slow and long, and the second group took the time word. English kept the medical sense, then let it spread to anything persistent and unwelcome: chronic shortage, chronic lateness. The neutral sense survives in chronicle and chronology.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chronologychronicleanachronismsynchronize
In a sentence
Her back pain became chronic after the second fall.
The ward has a chronic shortage of night staff.