Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Erythema
/ˌɛrɪˈθiːmə/noun
Redness of the skin caused by widened blood vessels underneath.
The Greek roots
ἐρυθρός
erythrós
red
Literally: “a reddening”
Follow a root:ἐρυθρός4 words
The story of the word
ἐρύθημα was ordinary Greek for a blush, from ἐρυθρός, red. Medicine kept the word and gave it borders, causes and named varieties, so the flush now comes with a differential diagnosis. The same root sits in erythrocyte, the red blood cell, and in erythromycin, named after the reddish soil bacterium it was isolated from in 1952. Latin ruber and English red are cousins of it from much further back.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
erythrocyteerythromycinerythroblast
In a sentence
There was mild erythema around the injection site and nothing else.
The rash began as a ring of erythema on the thigh, which is what sent him to the clinic.