Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Thymus
/ˈθaɪməs/noun
A gland behind the breastbone where T cells mature, large in children and shrinking after puberty.
The Greek roots
θύμος
thýmos
thymus gland
θύμον
thýmon
thyme
Literally: “the thyme-shaped one”
The story of the word
Greek anatomists named the gland after a bunch of thyme, which its lobed shape was thought to resemble; the herb in turn is tied to θύειν, to burn as an offering, because thyme went on the altar fire. There is a second θυμός in Greek meaning spirit, rage or the seat of feeling, spelled the same and unrelated to the gland. Immunology only worked out what the organ does in the 1960s, through Jacques Miller's experiments on mice.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
thymethymocytethymectomy
In a sentence
The thymus is largest in childhood and mostly fat by middle age.