Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cystitis
/sɪˈstaɪtɪs/noun
Inflammation of the bladder, usually from a bacterial infection, causing burning and a constant urge to urinate.
The Greek roots
κύστις
kýstis
bladder, pouch
-ῖτις
-îtis
inflammation of
Literally: “bladder inflammation”
The story of the word
κύστις covered any bag or pouch in the body, not just the urinary one, which is why a fluid-filled sac anywhere is still a cyst. Greek physicians used the word for the gall bladder too, a sense that survives in cholecystitis. The condition is old news in the medical corpus; the modern name is a nineteenth-century assembly job.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
cystcysticcholecystitiscystoscopy
In a sentence
A three-day course cleared the cystitis, and the GP suggested drinking more water.