coronary

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin corōnārius (“of or belonging to a crown or wreath”),^[2][3][4][5] formed from corōna (“garland, wreath, crown”) with -ārius.^[4][6] Corōna is the source of crown and coronation.^[3][5][7] Barnhart thinks it came possibly also through Middle French coronaire,^[8] and the OED compares the French word, recorded from the 13th century.^[2] Etymonline derives the Latin noun from a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to turn, bend”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Suitable for garlands or wreaths: 1610, in John Guillim's Display of Heraldrie;^[2][8] Evelyn's coronary garden was a flower garden, and a coronary was a plant grown for garlands.^[2][8] Etymonline dates the sense to about 1600; it was obsolete by the end of the 17th century.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

From 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne, the adjective meant resembling or forming a crown;^[2][3] Johnson (1755) quoted Browne's "coronary spots upon the crown" of the basilisk.^[9] In the later 17th century anatomists applied it to vessels, nerves and ligaments that encircle another part like a crown,^[7][10] and above all to the blood vessels that surround the heart and feed its muscle;^[3][7] Barnhart finds this use by 1679, Etymonline in the 1670s and the OED in 1686.^[8][3][2] Johnson explained that the arteries were imagined to encircle the heart like a garland.^[9] Coronary artery is recorded from 1741,^[3] and the word gradually came to mean simply "of the heart".^[7][4] It was also used for the crown of a tooth (1823) and a bone in a horse's foot (1843), and as coronary gold for the gold collected for a victorious Roman general.^[2][11] The noun, short for coronary artery and later for coronary thrombosis, is recorded from 1893;^[2][4] Etymonline dates the sense "heart attack" to 1955, and Ayto places it after the Second World War.^[3][7]

Timeline

• c. 1600 – suitable for garlands.^[3]
• 1610 – suitable for garlands; a plant for garlands (obsolete by 1696).^[2][8][4]
• 1646 – resembling or forming a crown.^[2]
• 1679 – of blood vessels that encircle a part, such as the heart.^[8]
• 1686 – anatomy, of vessels, ligaments and nerves encircling a part.^[2]
• 1741 – coronary artery.^[3]
• 1823 – of the crown of a tooth.^[2]
• 1893 – noun, a coronary artery or coronary thrombosis.^[2][4]
• 1955 – noun, a heart attack.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Relating to the arteries that supply the heart with blood; more broadly, relating to the heart: coronary disease.^[4][12][2]
2. (anatomy) Of blood vessels, nerves or ligaments: encircling a part or structure like a crown.^[12][4][2]
3. Relating to or shaped like a crown.^[4][2]
4. (obsolete, 1610–1696) Suitable for making garlands.^[2][11]

Noun

1. A heart attack, especially one caused by a thrombosis in a coronary artery: Her father had a coronary in his fifties.^[12][4][3]
2. A coronary artery.^[4][2]

Word family

• postcoronary
• coronary artery
• coronary cushion
• coronary heart disease
• coronary sinus
• coronary thrombosis
• coronary vein

Related words

• crown
• corona
• coronation
• coronet
• coroner

Usage notes

The OED records separately a rare noun coronary, the office of a coroner (1872), from Medieval Latin coronāria.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins