QUIZ
How the crab
turned to be cancer (medical term meaning tumor ) ???
ANSWER
ONLINE
ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY
- Old English cancer "spreading
sore, cancer" (also canceradl), from Latin cancer "a
crab," later, "malignant tumor," from Greek
karkinos, which, like the Modern English word, has three meanings:
crab, tumor, and the zodiac constellation (late 14c. in English),
from PIE root *qarq- "to be hard" (like the shell of a
crab); cf. Sanskrit karkatah "crab," karkarah "hard;"
and perhaps cognate with PIE root *qar-tu- "hard, strong,"
source of English hard.
Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, among others, noted similarity of crabs to some tumors with swollen veins. Meaning "person born under the zodiac sign of Cancer" is from 1894. The sun being in Cancer at the summer solstice, the constellation had association in Latin writers with the south and with summer heat. Cancer stick "cigarette" is from 1959.
No comments:
Post a Comment