Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Thrombocyte
/ˈθrɒmbəsaɪt/noun
A platelet, the small blood cell fragment that plugs damaged vessels and starts clotting.
The Greek roots
θρόμβος
thrómbos
lump, clot
κύτος
kútos
hollow vessel, container
Literally: “clot cell”
The story of the word
θρόμβος in Greek is any lump of something set: a clot of blood in Aeschylus, curdled milk elsewhere. The technical name says what the cell does; the ordinary English name, platelet, says only what it looks like, a little plate. κύτος meant a hollow thing, a jar or the hull of a ship, before biology drafted it as the standard ending for cell, which is why leukocyte, erythrocyte and cytoplasm all carry a container in them.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
thrombosisthrombinleukocytecytoplasm
In a sentence
Chemotherapy dropped his thrombocyte count and the nosebleeds started.