Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Encephalitis
/ɛnˌsɛfəˈlaɪtɪs/noun
Inflammation of the brain, usually caused by viral infection or by the immune system attacking brain tissue.
The Greek roots
ἐν
en
in, within
κεφαλή
kephalḗ
head
-ῖτις
-îtis
inflammation of
Literally: “inflammation of what is in the head”
The story of the word
Greek had no simple noun for the brain. It called the organ ἐγκέφαλος, 'the thing in the head', naming it by address rather than by function, and that phrase is what sits inside this word. Between 1917 and 1928 an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica left survivors frozen for decades, the patients Oliver Sacks wrote about in Awakenings. The cause was never established.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
encephalogramcephalichydrocephalusmeningitis
In a sentence
The scan and the lumbar puncture together pointed to viral encephalitis.