infarction

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin infarctio, a noun of action from Latin infarciō (“to stuff into, cram”).^[2][3] The Latin verb is formed from in- (“into”) and farciō (“to stuff”),^[3][4][5] the verb behind farce.^[3] The Shorter Oxford and Dictionary.com analyse the English word as infarct with the suffix -ion,^[6][7] though that noun is recorded only from 1873.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of stuffing up, or the state of being stuffed up; an obstruction: 1689, in G. Harvey's Art of Curing Diseases by Expectation.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1680s,^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1680–90.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In early use the word covered any stuffing or blockage in the body: Johnson (1755) defined it as "stuffing; constipation" and quoted Harvey on an infarction and obstruction of the spleen.^[8] In pathology it was long applied to a variety of local morbid conditions, and was later restricted to conditions caused by a fault in the local circulation.^[3] The Shorter Oxford describes the shift from congestion or vascular obstruction to the modern sense, the death of tissue when its blood supply, especially through an artery, is blocked.^[6] The word is also used for the dead area itself, as a synonym of infarct.^[6][9][10] The related verb infarct, to block a vessel or organ, is recorded from 1822, and the noun infarct from 1873.^[2]

Timeline

• 1689 – the action of stuffing up; an obstruction in the body.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The process by which an infarct forms: the death of an area of tissue because its blood supply is cut off, as by a thrombus or embolus: a myocardial infarction.^{[11][12][6][10]}
2. An infarct; the area of dead tissue itself.^[11][9][6]

Word family

• postinfarction
• myocardial infarction

Related words

• infarct
• farce
• forcemeat

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
12. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster