Whilst many medical terms tend to be fairly complex and are typically derived from classical Latin and Greek roots, the ten words listed here were all first used in medical contexts before gaining wider and more general use elsewhere in the language, and include such familiar terms as DRASTIC, RECIPE and REFRIGERATE. Oppositely, English also contains a number of terms that are now almost exclusively used in medicine yet were originally used elsewhere. For instance, on its first appearance in the language in the early fourteenth century, the word doctor was used to describe a religious scholar or philosopher, and is descended from the Latin verb docere, meaning ‘to teach’. Similarly, a nurse was originally a woman who looked after or fostered children (a meaning retained in the word nursery and the phrase wet nurse), whilst hospital was originally another name for a guesthouse and is derived from the same root – Latin hospitale, meaning a ‘place for guests’ – as the word hospitality.
The word abbreviation was adopted into English from French in the fifteenth century, and is ultimately descended from the same Latin root – breviare, meaning ‘to shorten’ – as similar words like brief, brevity and abridge. The earliest record of the word comes from the Chirurgia Magna (The Great Surgery), a work by the fourteenth-century French physician Guy de Chauliac, first translated into English in the 1420s. In this context, abbreviation was originally used to refer to the reduction in size or contraction of a muscle or similar part of the body; it was not until the late 1500s that the word was first used for a shortened word or phrase. Of comparable history is relaxation, which de Chauliac first used to describe the loosening or softening of a part of the body or else the release of tension in a muscle, and it was not until the mid-1500s that the term came to refer to a period of rest or leisure.
Adopted into the language from French and ultimately descended from Latin, the word attraction dates back to the early sixteenth century in English when it was originally a medical term used variously to refer to the inhalation of breath, the absorption or intake of food or similar matter by the body, or the drawing out of infection or diseased fluids from the body. A more general sense of the word developed in the early seventeenth century, with the first scientific reference to magnetic attraction found in the works of Francis Bacon in the 1620s. In the sense of something that draws a crowd, meanwhile, an attraction dates from the early 1800s.
Derived from the Greek word katharsis, meaning ‘purging’ or ‘cleansing’, catharsis first entered the language in the early nineteenth century, whilst the adjective cathartic, meaning ‘satisfying’ or ‘cleansing’, dates back to the mid-seventeenth century. Both forms of the word were originally used only in medical contexts and related fairly unpleasantly to any physical purging or evacuation of the body, such as vomiting or emptying the bowels. Over time, the use of both terms broadened to come to imply simply a cleansing or purifying release of emotion, with the first reference to psychological catharsis dating in English from 1909.
Derived at length from the Greek word drastikos, meaning ‘effective’ or ‘active’, the first use of the word drastic in English was in reference to a medical treatment that was especially strong or potent, and in particular one that was intended to have a strong purgative effect on the digestive system. Dating from the seventeenth century, this medical use of the word largely dropped away in the nineteenth century, when the more general sense of drastic, meaning simply ‘extreme’ or ‘severe’, first began to develop.
Derived from the Latin methodus, meaning a ‘way of doing’ or ‘teaching’, the word method dates from the fifteenth century in English and was originally used to describe a prescribed or defined process or technique. In this sense, the word was first used purely in medical contexts to refer to the recommended course of treatment that should be taken in order to remedy certain conditions or diseases. Later use of the word became more generalized, referring simply to any technique of doing something, whilst in reference to ‘regularity’ or ‘orderliness’, the word dates from the early seventeenth century.
Adopted into English from French, the verb mortify originated in the fourteenth century and is ultimately derived from the Latin word for ‘death’, mors. In this sense, the verb originally meant to ‘put to death’ or ‘destroy’, and was first recorded as such in John Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible c.1382. As an adjective, however, the first use of the word mortifying was originally a medical one, used to describe either a caustic medical compound that could corrode flesh or tissue, or else a part of the body afflicted by a destructive, necrotizing condition like gangrene. In this sense, mortifying dates from the fifteenth century and it was not until the early seventeenth century that it came to mean ‘humiliating’ or ‘deeply embarrassing’.
Used to describe a vast amount of something, the word plethora is a Latin loanword ultimately descended from the Ancient Greek word for ‘fullness’, plethore. It first appeared in English in medical contexts in the mid-sixteenth century to describe an imbalance in the blood or any of the other bodily humours of historical medicine. This meaning broadened in the seventeenth century to come to refer to anything unhealthy or generally damaging to the body, and then, in the mid-nineteenth century, to an excess or overabundance of something. Plethora is in fact one of several English words whose meanings derive from the four traditional humours of ancient medicine: revulsion, for instance, originally referred to the withdrawal of such fluids from the body as a medical treatment, whilst repulsive, repellent and repercussive all once described anything used to drive bodily fluids back to their source and away from an injury or infection.
Unlike in modern English, the word recipe was originally a verb, first recorded in the early 1300s and derived from the Latin verb recipere, meaning ‘to take’, from where receive, receipt and reception are all similarly descended. As a verb, recipe was used exclusively in medical contexts as a direction written at the top of a prescription instructing a patient how best or how often to take their medicine. The noun recipe began to develop from this original meaning in the early 1500s, first simply as another word for a medicinal formula or compound, and then in the early 1600s in reference to a list of ingredients needed to prepare something.
As modern as words like refrigerate and refrigerator may appear, they in fact have a considerably lengthy history with their earliest derivatives dating as far back as the fifteenth century. Refrigerate was originally an adjective rather than a verb, and meant simply ‘chilled’ or ‘cooled’, whilst both refrigerator and refrigerative were originally used to describe anything – and in particular a medicine – that had a cooling effect on a fevered person. The origin of all of these terms and others like them is the Latin verb refrigerare, meaning ‘to reduce the temperature of’ or ‘to bring down an inflammation’, which is itself derived from the Latin word for ‘cold’, frigus.
The word sporadic has been used in English since the mid-nineteenth century to describe anything occurring intermittently or randomly, but prior to this it was used exclusively in medical contexts to refer to a non-epidemic outbreak of a disease, or else one of which only a handful of isolated cases are known. In this pathological sense, the word dates back as far as the late 1600s, and is derived at length from the Greek word sporadikos, meaning ‘scattered’ or ‘sown’, and ultimately the Greek for ‘seed’, spora, from which the English spore is also derived.