morbidity

Etymology

It is formed from English morbid + -ity;^[2][3][4][5] Etymonline also allows a borrowing from French morbidité,^[5] but the OED dates the French word only to 1849.^[2] Morbid is from Latin morbidus (“diseased, sick”), from morbus (“disease”),^[2][5][6] whose further origin is unknown;^[2] de Vaan, cited by Etymonline, connects it perhaps with morior (“to die”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The condition of being diseased: 1721, in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

The OED compares the earlier morbidness.^[2] The word first named physical or mental illness, and in medicine it also covers illness or injury that complicates a condition or a treatment.^[2] From 1795 it was used of a morbid frame of mind, an unhealthy gloom;^[2] Etymonline dates the matching sense of morbid only from 1834.^[5] The statistical sense, the rate of a disease in a population, is recorded from 1852, in the Journal of the Statistical Society.^[2]

Timeline

• 1721 – the state of being diseased.^[2][7]
• 1795 – morbid quality or state of mind.^[2]
• 1852 – in medicine, the incidence of a disease in a population.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The quality of being morbid, especially an unhealthy or gloomy state of mind.^[7][8][9]
2. A diseased state or symptom; ill health: Smoking is a major cause of morbidity and mortality.^[7][2]
3. The relative incidence of a disease in a particular population or place; also called the morbidity rate.^[7][9][8][2]

Related words

• morbidezza
• morbific
• morbilli
• morbid
• comorbidity

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins