Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Euthanasia
/ˌjuːθəˈneɪʒə/noun
The deliberate and painless ending of the life of a person or animal that is suffering.
The Greek roots
εὖ
eû
well, good
θάνατος
thánatos
death
Literally: “good death”
The story of the word
For the Greeks it described a manner of dying, not an act performed on anyone: quietly, unashamed, at a decent age. Francis Bacon revived the term in 1605 for the physician's duty to ease a dying patient's last hours, still with no thought of hastening the end. The active sense, killing to relieve suffering, is only about 160 years old. In Hesiod, Thanatos is the brother of Sleep.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1640s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
thanatologyeuphoriaeulogyeuphemism
In a sentence
The vet explained the process of euthanasia in a level voice and gave them the room.