Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Macrophage
/ˈmækrəfeɪdʒ/noun
A large white blood cell that engulfs and digests microbes, debris and dying cells.
The Greek roots
μακρός
makrós
large, long
φαγεῖν
phageîn
to eat, devour
Literally: “big eater”
The story of the word
Élie Metchnikoff pushed a rose thorn into a transparent starfish larva at Messina in 1882 and watched mobile cells swarm to it. From that he built the theory of phagocytosis and named the cells that do it, splitting them into microphages and macrophages by size. He shared the 1908 Nobel with Ehrlich, who is behind eosinophil in this same batch, and the two men disagreed for years about whether immunity was cellular or chemical. Both were right.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
Same family
phagocytesarcophagusmacroscopicoesophagus
In a sentence
Macrophages clear the wound of bacteria and dead tissue before repair can start.