Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Osteomyelitis
/ˌɒstioʊˌmaɪəˈlaɪtɪs/noun
Infection of bone and its marrow cavity, usually bacterial, causing pain, fever and bone destruction.
The Greek roots
ὀστέον
ostéon
bone
μυελός
muelós
marrow
-ῖτις
-îtis
inflammation
Literally: “inflammation of bone marrow”
The story of the word
Nélaton coined the term in Paris in 1834. The suffix -itis started life as an ordinary Greek feminine adjective ending, agreeing with an understood nosos, disease, so arthritis was really "the joint disease"; medicine later narrowed it to mean inflammation specifically. Muelos also gave myelin, the sheath around nerve fibres, named for looking like marrow.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
osteoporosismyelinosteopathpoliomyelitis
In a sentence
A diabetic foot ulcer that reaches bone raises the question of osteomyelitis.
Six weeks of intravenous antibiotics is the standard course.