Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Syringe
/sɪˈrɪndʒ/noun
A tube fitted with a plunger for injecting fluid into the body or drawing it out.
The Greek roots
σῦριγξ
sŷrinx
pipe, tube
Literally: “pipe, reed tube”
Follow a root:σῦριγξ2 words
The story of the word
Syrinx was a nymph who fled Pan and was turned into reeds at the riverbank; he cut them and made the pan pipe, so the instrument and the medical tube share a name. English borrowed the word in the fifteenth century for any squirting tube, centuries before the hollow needle existed. The plunger syringe as we know it dates from the 1850s, when Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood arrived at it separately.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
syrinxsyringomyeliasyringa
In a sentence
She drew up the dose, tapped the syringe twice and held it to the light.