Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Erythrocyte
/ɪˈrɪθrəsaɪt/noun
A red blood cell, the disc that carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues.
The Greek roots
ἐρυθρός
erythrós
red
κύτος
kýtos
hollow vessel
Literally: “red hollow vessel”
The story of the word
Κύτος meant a jar, a chest, the hold of a ship, anything hollow, and nineteenth-century biology drafted it as the standard ending for anything cellular. Red hollow vessel is a fair description of the object: a mature red cell is a bag of haemoglobin that has thrown its own nucleus overboard to make room for cargo. Ἐρυθρός also gives erythema, the flush of inflamed skin, and the Erythraean Sea of the old sailing manuals, which is the Red Sea.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- late 19th century
Same family
erythemaleukocytecytologycytoplasm
In a sentence
Her erythrocyte count came back low enough to explain the breathlessness.
Under the microscope the erythrocytes looked like stacked coins.