Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Monocyte
/ˈmɒnəsaɪt/noun
A large white blood cell with one unlobed nucleus, which matures into a macrophage in tissue.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
single, alone
κύτος
kýtos
hollow vessel
Literally: “single hollow vessel”
The story of the word
The name counts lobes rather than cells. A monocyte carries one unsegmented nucleus, which separates it at a glance from the neutrophils with their pinched and beaded ones, and pathologists needed that distinction long before anyone knew what either cell was for. Leave the bloodstream and the monocyte changes name as well as job: settled in tissue it becomes a macrophage, so one cell answers to two words depending on where it is standing.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
monopolymonolithmonkerythrocyte
In a sentence
A high monocyte count sent them looking for a chronic infection.
Monocytes are the cells that turn into the tissue's cleanup crew.