Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Meniscus
/məˈnɪskəs/noun
A crescent of cartilage in the knee, or the curved surface of a liquid in a tube.
The Greek roots
μηνίσκος
mēnískos
little moon, crescent
Literally: “little moon”
Follow a root:μηνίσκος1 word
The story of the word
μηνίσκος is a little moon, the diminutive of μήνη, and Greek applied it to anything crescent-shaped, including the metal crescents fixed above statues to keep birds off. Opticians took it in the 17th century for a lens convex on one face and concave on the other. Anatomy claimed it in the 19th for the two cartilage crescents in the knee, which is where most people meet the word, usually in bad news from a physiotherapist.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
menopausemenarchecatamenia
In a sentence
Read the burette at the bottom of the meniscus, not at the rim.