Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Dyspepsia
/dɪsˈpɛpsiə/noun
Indigestion, with pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen after eating.
The Greek roots
δυσ-
dys-
bad, difficult
πέψις
pépsis
digestion, cooking
Literally: “bad cooking”
The story of the word
Greek medicine understood digestion as cooking: πέσσειν meant to cook, ripen or concoct, and the stomach was the pot where food got done. δυσπεψία is therefore a failure in the kitchen, food that never came right. The same verb supplies pepsin and peptide, and its optimistic opposite eupepsia had a short English career as the state of digesting well.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- early 18th century
Same family
pepticpepsinpeptidedyslexia
In a sentence
Chronic dyspepsia sent him for the endoscopy he had put off for a year.
The Victorians blamed dyspepsia for most of their bad tempers.