Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Paresthesia
/ˌpærɪsˈθiːʒə/noun
A tingling, prickling or burning felt in the skin without any outside cause.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside, amiss
αἴσθησις
aísthēsis
sensation, perception
Literally: “sensation gone wrong”
The story of the word
Pins and needles, given a clinical name. The prefix παρα- carries its 'disordered' sense here rather than its plain 'beside' one, so the word means a sensation that has gone wrong rather than one felt alongside another. Nineteenth-century neurologists ran the same pattern across the senses: paraphasia for speech, parosmia for smell, paramnesia for memory.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
anaesthesiaaestheticsynaesthesiaparosmia
In a sentence
The paresthesia in her left hand woke her most nights before the carpal tunnel was diagnosed.
Chemotherapy can leave a lasting paresthesia in the feet.