osteoporosis

Etymology

The revised OED takes it as borrowed from German Osteoporosis, now Osteoporose, used by A. L. Richter in 1839, which is from French ostéoporose, recorded in J. Lobstein's treatise on pathological anatomy (1833).^[2] The French word is formed from ostéo-, pore and -ose.^[2] Most other dictionaries describe it as a New Latin formation from osteo-, pore and -osis,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} with Ancient Greek πόρος (póros, “passage, pore”) as its middle part;^[3][8][9][7] the combining form goes back to ὀστέον (ostéon, “bone”).^[1] The OED notes that French ostéoporose is recorded in 1832 in another sense, the hardening of bone called eburnation, and that Richter also cited a Greek verb meaning to form a callus.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Rarefaction of bone, the loss of density that makes it porous: 1841, in the British and Foreign Medical Review.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates the medical sense to 1841,^[4] Dictionary.com places the word in 1840–50,^[10] and Etymonline gives 1846, defining it as morbid absorption of bone that leaves it abnormally porous.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English as a medical term of the mid-19th century.^[5][8] It came to mean especially a reduction in the density of normally mineralized bone, commonly seen in women after the menopause and in older people;^[2][5] Stedman's describes it as an age-related disorder of decreased bone mass and weakened bone structure that makes fractures more likely.^[9] From 1914, in physical anthropology and pathology, symmetrical osteoporosis was also used for the condition now called porotic hyperostosis.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged further records a progressive metabolic disease of grazing animals by the name.^[4]

Timeline

• 1841 – rarefaction of bone, a reduction in bone density.^[2][4] Etymonline dates the word to 1846.^[7]
• 1914 – symmetrical osteoporosis, in physical anthropology, porotic hyperostosis.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A condition in which the bones lose mass and density and become porous and brittle, especially in older people and women after the menopause: After her hip fracture she was tested for osteoporosis.^[6][4][5][2]
2. A progressive metabolic disease of grazing animals.^[4]

Word family

• osteoporotic

Related words

• osteo-
• pore
• -osis
• porous
• osteopathy

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House