Embolus
/ˈɛmbələs/noun
A clot, bubble or fragment carried in the bloodstream until it blocks a vessel.
The Greek roots
Literally: “thrown in, a plug”
The story of the word
ἔμβολος was the bronze ram on the prow of a trireme, the thing driven into an enemy hull, and generally any plug or wedge forced into place. Medicine uses it for whatever travels in the blood until it jams: a clot broken off a vein wall, a globule of marrow fat after a fracture, a bubble of air, a shower of cholesterol crystals. Virchow drew the line from thrombus in the 1850s by showing that clots in the lung had arrived from the leg veins rather than grown where they were found.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The embolus had travelled from the calf to the pulmonary artery.
Divers surfacing too fast risk a gas embolus.