elephantiasis

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin elephantiasis,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Ancient Greek ἐλεφαντίασις (elephantíasis),^[2][3][6] from ἐλέφας (eléphas, “elephant”), the source of elephant,^[2][7][6] and the suffix -iasis, which forms names of diseases.^[7][3][8] Etymonline takes the word straight from Greek,^[7] and Wiktionary allows either route.^[1] According to Aretaeus, as Klein reports, the Greek noun properly meant a disease in which the skin resembles an elephant's.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Any of several skin diseases that make the affected part look like an elephant's hide: 1581, in Mulcaster's Positions.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1562,^[5] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English the mid 16th century.^[8][4]

Semantic evolution

The name covered two conditions: the older one, elephantiasis Græcorum or Egyptian leprosy, with a skin like an elephant's, and elephantiasis Arabum, with a thickening of a part of the body.^[7][2] Johnson (1755) still defined the word as a kind of leprosy that crusts the skin like an elephant's hide.^[9] Modern dictionaries keep it for the gross enlargement of a limb or the scrotum when filarial worms block the lymphatic vessels.^[8][5][10] The earlier English name was elephancy, which Etymonline dates to the late 14th century and the OED records from 1547 to 1657.^[7][2] By 1866, in a letter of G. Meredith, the word had also become a figure for excessive growth.^[2]

Timeline

• 1581 – a skin disease that gives a part of the body the look of an elephant's hide.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1562,^[5] and Etymonline to the 1580s.^[7]
• 1866 – figurative, a great or undue enlargement.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Long-lasting, often extreme enlargement and hardening of the skin and the tissue under it, especially in the legs or the scrotum, when the lymph vessels are blocked.^[3][5][10]
2. The tropical disease, also called filariasis, in which nematode worms infest the lymph system and lead to this condition.^[3][10]
3. Figuratively, excessive growth or overdevelopment: the elephantiasis of the company's head office.^[5][2]
4. (obsolete) A kind of leprosy or other skin disease that roughens the skin like an elephant's hide.^[9][8]

Related words

• elephant
• elephancy
• filariasis

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ 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
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. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins