Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Pathogen
/ˈpæθədʒən/noun
Any organism or agent that causes disease.
The Greek roots
πάθος
páthos
suffering, experience
-γενής
-genḗs
producing, born of
Literally: “suffering-producer”
The story of the word
The word belongs to the germ-theory decades at the end of the nineteenth century, when it finally became useful to have one name for the thing that makes people ill, whether bacterium, virus or fungus. πάθος meant whatever happens to you rather than what you do, which is why it feeds both pathology and sympathy, and why the passive voice in grammar is called that. Only a tiny fraction of known microbes qualify as pathogens.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
pathologysympathyapathyantipathy
In a sentence
They traced the pathogen to a single contaminated batch within three days.