Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Plasma
/ˈplæzmə/noun
The liquid part of blood, or an ionised gas counted as a fourth state of matter.
The Greek roots
πλάσμα
plásma
something moulded
Literally: “a thing shaped”
Follow a root:πλάσμα3 words
The story of the word
Πλάσμα is what a potter makes: the noun from πλάσσειν, to mould. Purkyně took it for the fluid of blood in the 1840s, and Irving Langmuir borrowed it again in 1928 for ionised gas, reportedly because the way the stuff carried particles reminded him of blood plasma. The Greek word also gave plastic, and gave the Greek verb its harsher English child, plaster.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
plasticprotoplasmcytoplasmplaster
In a sentence
The clinic separates the plasma and returns the red cells to the donor.