ὑποχόνδριος

Forms

ῠ̔ποχόνδρῐος (hupokhóndrios) m or f (neuter ῠ̔ποχόνδρῐον); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Ancient Greek ὑπό (hupó, “under”) + χόνδρος (khóndros, “cartilage”) + -ιος (-ios), “lying under the cartilage”, that is, under the cartilage of the breastbone.^[1][2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in the Hippocratic Corpus, mostly as the neuter noun ὑποχόνδριον, for the soft part of the belly below the breastbone and ribs, as in “the right hypochondrium”.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The word is frequent in medical writing.^[4] Aristotle places the region above the navel and uses the adjective of ailments in that part of the body,^[2][3] and Theophrastus, Soranus and Galen use the noun.^[2][5][3] A Sahidic Coptic text of about AD 350 has it as a loanword.^[6]

Late Latin took the plural as hypochondria “the abdomen”, a region once held to be the seat of melancholy.^[7] English had it in the late 14th century as the anatomical term ipocondrie; from the 1660s the English word hypochondria meant low spirits without real cause, and by 1816 the unfounded belief that one is ill.^[7] Babiniotis traces the change to the 16th century, when the Latin term for a disorder of the hypochondrium was reused for an illness of unclear cause thought to sit in the side cartilages.^[8] Modern Greek υποχόνδριος (ypochóndrios) is a learned revival meaning “hypochondriac”.^[9][8]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – The Hippocratic Corpus uses the neuter noun for the upper abdomen.^[2][4]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle places the region above the navel and speaks of ailments there.^[2][5]
• 2nd century AD – Galen uses the noun often.^[2]
• 4th century AD – A Sahidic Coptic text of about 350 has the word as a loan.^[6]
• Late 14th century – Middle English has the anatomical term ipocondrie.^[7]
• 1660s – English hypochondria comes to mean depression without real cause.^[7]
• Modern times – Modern Greek revives the adjective in the sense “hypochondriac”.^[9][8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lying under the cartilage of the breastbone; of ailments, in that region.^[2][1]

Noun

1. (neuter, singular and plural) The soft part of the body below the breastbone cartilage and above the navel, the upper abdomen, the hypochondrium.^[2][3][5]

Word family

• ὑποχονδριακός (hupokhondriakós)

Related words

• χόνδρος (khóndros)
• Latin hypochondria
• English hypochondria
• English hypochondrium

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
4. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
5. ^ a b c Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg
6. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
7. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki