Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Sclerosis
/skləˈroʊsɪs/noun
The abnormal hardening of body tissue, usually from scarring or thickening.
The Greek roots
σκληρός
sklērós
hard, dry
Literally: “a hardening”
Follow a root:σκληρός2 words
The story of the word
Greek doctors used σκληρός for hard swellings and stiff joints; the tidy disease label ending in -osis is nineteenth-century clinical bookkeeping. Jean-Martin Charcot described sclérose en plaques in 1868, the scattered hardened patches that give multiple sclerosis its name. The same root sits in scleroderma, hard skin, and in the sclera, the tough white coat of the eye.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
arteriosclerosisatherosclerosissclerodermasclera
In a sentence
The report noted early sclerosis in the small vessels of the kidney.