Osteoarthritis
/ˌɒstiəʊɑːˈθraɪtɪs/noun
Joint pain and stiffness caused by cartilage wearing away and bone remodelling underneath.
The Greek roots
Literally: “bone-joint inflammation”
The story of the word
The -itis is a poor fit. Inflammation is a consequence here rather than the cause, the primary event being cartilage loss, which is why some clinicians prefer osteoarthrosis and why anti-inflammatories treat the symptom and not the disease. ἄρθρον, a joint, had a second career in grammar: Greek grammarians called the definite article an ἄρθρον, the small joint that hinges a word into its sentence, and Latin rendered it articulus, from which English took article.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
In a sentence
The x-ray showed osteoarthritis in both knees, which explained the stairs.
Osteoarthritis is not simply wear and tear, whatever the leaflet says.