Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Phlegm
/flɛm/noun
Thick mucus coughed up from the airways.
The Greek roots
φλέγμα
phlégma
heat, inflammation
Literally: “burning, inflammation”
Follow a root:φλέγμα1 word
The story of the word
The word comes from φλέγω, to burn, and first meant the heat of an inflamed part. Hippocratic medicine then assigned it to the cold, wet humor, and the sense reversed completely, which is why a phlegmatic person today is the calm and slow one rather than the burning one. Pale mucus in a winter cough took the name because doctors believed that was the humor visibly leaving the body.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
phlegmaticphloxphlogiston
In a sentence
Three days of phlegm and no fever, so the doctor sent him home.
He took the news with the phlegm of a man who had expected worse.