Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cyanosis
/ˌsaɪəˈnoʊsɪs/noun
The bluish discolouration of skin and lips caused by poorly oxygenated blood.
The Greek roots
κυανός
kuanós
dark blue
-ωσις
-ōsis
condition, process
Literally: “a turning dark blue”
The story of the word
In Homer κύανος is a dark blue inlay, the material of the enamel bands on Agamemnon's breastplate, and only later a colour word in its own right. Its strangest descendant is cyanide, named not for any poison but for Prussian blue, the pigment the compound was first extracted from. So cyanosis and cyanide are relatives through a paint, though the two do end up in the same clinical sentence more often than the colour would suggest.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
cyancyanidecyanobacteria
In a sentence
The nurse noticed cyanosis around his lips before the monitor alarmed.