Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Melanoma
/ˌmɛləˈnoʊmə/noun
A cancer that starts in the pigment-producing cells of the skin.
The Greek roots
μέλας
mélas
black, dark
-ωμα
-ōma
tumour, growth
Literally: “black tumour”
The story of the word
Named for what it looks like: the tumour is dark because melanocytes, the cells that make melanin, carry on making it. The Greek suffix -ωμα marks the result of an action, and nineteenth-century medicine turned it into a general label for growths, giving carcinoma, sarcoma and lymphoma. Μέλας also gives melancholy, which is black bile, one of the four humours, and Melanesia, the black islands, named in 1832.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
melaninmelancholyMelanesiacarcinoma
In a sentence
The mole had changed shape over the summer, and the biopsy came back melanoma.