Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Rhabdomyolysis
/ˌræbdoʊmaɪˈɒlɪsɪs/noun
The breakdown of skeletal muscle, releasing myoglobin into the blood and threatening the kidneys.
The Greek roots
ῥάβδος
rhábdos
rod, stripe
μῦς
mûs
muscle, mouse
λύσις
lúsis
loosening, dissolution
Literally: “striped-muscle dissolution”
The story of the word
ῥάβδος is a rod, and skeletal muscle is called striated because of the bands visible under a microscope. μῦς means both mouse and muscle, the Greeks having decided that a bicep sliding under the skin looks like a small animal, which Latin agreed with in musculus. The modern understanding came out of the London Blitz, where Bywaters and Beall described in 1941 how people pulled alive from collapsed buildings then died of kidney failure.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
myocardiumanalysisparalysisrhabdovirus
In a sentence
Two days after the bootcamp class his urine went brown and the doctor said rhabdomyolysis.