Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Epilepsy
/ˈɛpɪlɛpsi/noun
A neurological disorder marked by recurrent seizures.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon
λαμβάνειν
lambánein
to seize, take hold
Literally: “a seizing upon”
The story of the word
The Greek name reports what bystanders saw: something took hold of the person from outside. The Hippocratic essay On the Sacred Disease attacks that reading directly, arguing around 400 BC that the illness comes from the brain and is no more divine than any other. English still runs the borrowed word alongside seizure, which is a literal translation of the same picture.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
catalepsynarcolepsysyllableanaleptic
In a sentence
Her epilepsy has been controlled on the same dose for eleven years.