Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Sciatica
/saɪˈætɪkə/noun
Pain running from the lower back down the leg along the sciatic nerve.
The Greek roots
ἰσχίον
iskhíon
hip joint, hip socket
ἰσχιαδικός
iskhiadikós
afflicted in the hip
Literally: “of the hip”
The story of the word
The Greek adjective meant afflicted in the hip, which is where the ancients located the trouble. Latin ischiadicus lost its opening syllable in ordinary speech and came out as sciaticus, so the English word ended up looking nothing like ischium, the hip bone that anatomy borrowed later and spelled properly. Both are the same Greek noun, arriving by different roads. The pain itself is usually a disc pressing on a nerve root well above the hip, so the name blames the wrong place.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
ischiumischialischiatic
In a sentence
Three weeks of sciatica and he was sleeping on the floor with his knees up on a chair.