Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Spasm
/ˈspæzəm/noun
A sudden involuntary contraction of a muscle.
The Greek roots
σπασμός
spasmós
convulsion, a pulling
Literally: “a pulling”
Follow a root:σπασμός1 word
The story of the word
σπᾶν means to pull or tear, so a spasm is the body being yanked from inside. Hippocratic writers used the noun for tetanus and for convulsive fits, and it came into English through Latin and French in the fourteenth century. The same verb produced spastic, a clinical adjective for muscle stiffness that became a schoolyard insult and had to be withdrawn from ordinary speech.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
spasticantispasmodicspasmodic
In a sentence
A spasm in his calf woke him at four in the morning.
The drug relaxes the spasm long enough for the scan to be readable.