Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Elephantiasis
/ˌɛlɪfænˈtaɪəsɪs/noun
Gross swelling of a limb or the scrotum caused by blocked lymphatic drainage, usually following filarial worm infection.
The Greek roots
ἐλέφας
eléphas
elephant, ivory
-ίασις
-íasis
diseased condition
Literally: “elephant condition”
The story of the word
Greek physicians named it for the skin, which thickens and cracks into the grey folds of an elephant's hide. They also used elephantiasis Graecorum for what later became leprosy, so old texts have to be read carefully to see which disease is meant. The cause, a mosquito-borne nematode, was not identified until Patrick Manson's work in the 1870s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
elephantpsoriasishypochondriasis
In a sentence
Mass drug administration has pushed elephantiasis out of most of the countries that once reported it.