anesthesia

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin anaesthēsia,^[2][3][4][5] from Ancient Greek ἀναισθησία (anaisthēsía, “lack of sensation, insensibility”),^[6][2][3][1] formed from ἀν- (an-, “without, not”) and αἴσθησις (aísthēsis, “feeling, sensation”),^[6][2][1][7] a noun from the verb meaning "to feel, perceive", which Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace to Proto-Indo-European *au- (“to perceive”).^[6][2][3] It is related to audible.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Loss of feeling, insensibility: Barnhart and Etymonline date the word to 1721,^[3][6] when it appeared in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary.^[8] Wiktionary dates the sense "insensibility" to 1679.^[1]

Semantic evolution

In October 1846 William Thomas Green Morton demonstrated the use of ether in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.^[8][9] On 21 November the physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to him that the state produced should be called "Anaesthesia" and the adjective "Anaesthetic".^[8][9][3] Although the word had been recorded long before, the American Heritage Dictionary holds that Holmes was really responsible for its entry into the language, and the OED's many examples from 1847 and 1848 show how fast it caught on.^[8] Etymonline dates the sense "a procedure for preventing pain in surgery" to 1846,^[6] and the noun anaesthetic, the substance, appeared by 1848.^[3] The back-formation aesthesia, the capacity to feel, is recorded from 1853.^[6] Merriam-Webster and Collins also record a figurative sense, a dullness of feeling or perception.^[4][10]

Timeline

• 1679 – insensibility (Wiktionary's date).^[1]
• 1721 – anaesthesia, loss of feeling, in Bailey's dictionary.^[8][3][6]
• 1846 – Oliver Wendell Holmes proposes anaesthesia and anaesthetic for the state produced by ether and its agent.^[8][9][3]
• 1846 – a procedure for preventing pain in surgery.^[6]
• 1848 – anaesthetic as a noun, the drug.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Loss of sensation, and usually of consciousness, produced on purpose with drugs or gases so that surgery can be done without pain;^[4][5] general anesthesia affects the whole body, local anesthesia a limited part.^[4][10][5]
2. Loss of sensation, especially of touch, caused by damage to the nerves or another disorder.^[4][10][11]
3. The medical specialty of anesthesiology.^[11]
4. A general dullness of feeling or perception: a kind of moral anesthesia.^[4][10]

Related words

• anesthetize
• anesthetic
• anesthesiologist
• anesthesiology
• anaesthesia
• aesthetic
• aesthesia

Usage notes

Anesthesia is the usual American spelling;^[10][4] British English writes anaesthesia.^[10][5][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
9. ^ a b c Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
10. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins