Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cirrhosis
/sɪˈroʊsɪs/noun
Chronic scarring of the liver that hardens the organ and obstructs blood flow through it.
The Greek roots
κιρρός
kirrós
tawny, orange-yellow
Literally: “a yellowing”
Follow a root:κιρρός1 word
The story of the word
René Laennec, who also gave medicine the stethoscope, coined the name in 1819 for the tawny colour of the diseased livers he opened at autopsy. Doctors have complained about it ever since, since the defining feature is the scarring, not the shade. The double r has nothing to do with Latin cirrus, a curl, which names the wispy high cloud.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1827
In a sentence
By the time the cirrhosis was diagnosed, most of the liver had been replaced by scar.