homeopathy

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Homöopathie, coined by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of the system,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} and first written in English in the Latin form New Latin homoeopathia.^[2][7][8] Etymonline dates the German coinage to 1824, while Weekley puts it about 1800.^[2][4] The German word is made from Ancient Greek ὅμοιος (hómoios, “like, similar”) and -πάθεια (-pátheia, “feeling, suffering”), from πάθος (páthos, “suffering”).^[3][5][9][8] The adjective hómoios is derived from ὁμός (homós, “same”), which is related to English same.^[9] Ancient Greek already had ὁμοιοπάθεια (homoiopátheia), meaning sympathy or likeness of condition, but the modern word was formed afresh.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A system of treating disease, founded by Hahnemann of Leipzig about 1796, in which the patient is given very small doses of substances that would cause symptoms like those of the disease in a healthy person: 1826, in The Lancet.^[3][2][8][6]

Semantic evolution

Etymologically the word means "cure by similarity", the principle that like is cured by like, and it was set against allopathy, from Greek állos, "other", a 19th-century word for conventional medicine.^[9][7] French took the word as homéopathie by 1827,^[3] and English formed homoeopathic, homoeopath and homoeopathist by 1830.^[3] Ayto dates its arrival in English to about 1830.^[9]

Timeline

• 1826 – the system of treating disease by minute doses of substances that produce similar symptoms, first as homœopathia.^[3][2][8][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A system of alternative medicine that treats a disease with very small doses of a substance which, in larger amounts, would produce symptoms like the disease's in a healthy person; compare allopathy.^[10][6][3]

Word family

• homeopath
• homeopathic
• homeopathically
• homeopathist

Related words

• allopathy
• pathos
• sympathy
• homogeneous
• same

Usage notes

The spelling homoeopathy is the usual one in Britain and is the OED's headword;^[10][3] homeopathy is the American spelling, and an early form was homoeopathia.^[10][3][5]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
5. ^ a b c 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins