Diaphragm
/ˈdaɪəfræm/noun
The sheet of muscle between the chest and the abdomen that drives breathing.
The Greek roots
Literally: “a partition across”
The story of the word
Greek doctors used διάφραγμα for any dividing wall inside the body. Earlier writers had called the same muscle φρένες, a word that also meant the mind, on the belief that thought and feeling sat in the chest; that is why schizophrenia, a split mind, has nothing to do with the ribcage. Photography borrowed diaphragm for the adjustable stop in a lens and contraception for the rubber dome, both of them partitions doing what the name says.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Singers are taught to breathe from the diaphragm, which is anatomically sloppy but useful.
Hiccups are the diaphragm going into spasm.