Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Tetanus
/ˈtɛtənəs/noun
A bacterial infection that locks the muscles in painful rigid spasm, often starting at the jaw.
The Greek roots
τέτανος
tétanos
muscular spasm
τείνειν
teínein
to stretch
Literally: “the stretching”
The story of the word
Greek physicians used τέτανος for the rigidity itself, and Hippocratic writings describe the locked jaw and the arched back with unpleasant accuracy. The cause, Clostridium tetani in soil and manure, was not identified until the 1880s. So the disease carries a name that describes what a body does rather than what infects it, which is why the everyday name is still lockjaw.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
Same family
tonetensionhypotenusetendon
In a sentence
The nurse asked when he had last had a tetanus booster before cleaning the wound.