Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Pleurisy
/ˈplʊərɪsi/noun
Inflammation of the membrane lining the lungs and chest wall, which makes breathing sharply painful.
The Greek roots
πλευρά
pleurá
rib, side of the body
Literally: “inflammation of the side”
Follow a root:πλευρά2 words
The story of the word
πλευρά is the side of the body and the rib that shapes it; πλευρῖτις is that side inflamed. Late Latin mangled the ending into pleurisis, French smoothed it to pleurisie, and English ended up with a word that no longer looks Greek at all. Anatomy only later gave the name pleura to the membrane itself, so here the disease named the tissue rather than the other way round.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
pleurapleuralpleurodynia
In a sentence
Every breath hurt in one spot, which the doctor said was typical of pleurisy.