Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Syndrome
/ˈsɪndroʊm/noun
A group of symptoms that consistently occur together.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together
δρόμος
drómos
a running, course
Literally: “a running together”
The story of the word
Greek physicians used συνδρομή for a concurrence of signs, and English took it through medical Latin in the 1540s, where it stayed a technical word for centuries. The δρόμος half is a racecourse, which is why a hippodrome is a horse-track and a palindrome runs back the way it came. Ordinary speech has since attached syndrome to anything that recurs as a set, from imposter syndrome to empty nest syndrome.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1540s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
hippodromepalindromedromedaryprodromeaerodrome
In a sentence
The syndrome was described in 1963 and named after the doctor who spotted it.
Three symptoms alone do not make a syndrome.