Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Hemorrhoid
/ˈhɛmərɔɪd/noun
A swollen vein in the anus or lower rectum.
The Greek roots
αἷμα
haîma
blood
ῥεῖν
rheîn
to flow
Literally: “blood-flowing ones”
The story of the word
The Hippocratic writers called them αἱμορροΐδες, the bleeding ones, naming the condition for the sign a patient reports rather than the swelling that causes it. English had the word by the fourteenth century in spellings like emeroudes, and only later respelled it back towards the Greek. The same ῥεῖν runs through rheum, catarrh and diarrhoea, a family of words for things that will not stop flowing.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
hemorrhagerheumatismdiarrhoeacatarrh
In a sentence
The pharmacist recommended a cream and more fibre for the hemorrhoid.
Nearly half of adults get hemorrhoids at some point, and almost nobody mentions it.