Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Zoonosis
/ˌzoʊəˈnoʊsɪs/noun
A disease that passes from other animals to humans.
The Greek roots
ζῷον
zôion
living creature, animal
νόσος
nósos
disease, sickness
Literally: “animal disease”
The story of the word
Rudolf Virchow built the word in the nineteenth century while pressing his argument that human and veterinary medicine are one field with one set of problems. Rabies, plague, brucellosis and most new influenzas are zoonoses. Nosos is the word Homer uses in the first book of the Iliad for the plague Apollo shoots into the Greek camp, which arrives, as it happens, by way of animals.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
zoologyprotozoannosologyzodiac
In a sentence
Roughly three in every four new human infections start as a zoonosis.