Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Dysphagia
/dɪsˈfeɪdʒə/noun
Difficulty in swallowing, whether from obstruction, muscle weakness or neurological damage.
The Greek roots
δυσ-
dys-
bad, difficult
φαγεῖν
phageîn
to eat, swallow
Literally: “difficult eating”
The story of the word
The δυσ- prefix is the same one in dyslexia and dyspnoea, marking something that works badly rather than not at all. Its Greek opposite is εὐ-, well, which is why euphoria and dysphoria are a matched pair. The eating half survives in biology as -phage, the cell-eating macrophage and the bacteria-eating bacteriophage.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
dyslexiadyspepsiamacrophagesarcophaguseuphoria
In a sentence
Dysphagia after the stroke meant every meal had to be thickened.
He was referred to speech therapy for dysphagia rather than for speech.