Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A noncontagious inflammation of the skin, characterized chiefly by redness, itching, and the outbreak of lesions that may discharge serous matter and become encrusted and scaly.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An inflammation of the skin attended with considerable exudation of lymph. Ordinarily the eczematous patch is red, slightly swollen, more or less incrusted, and moist on the removal of the crust, and causes considerable itching and smarting.
- n. Acute eczema when the color of the skin is very red.
- n. Pityriasis rubra.
Wiktionary
- n. An acute or chronic inflammation of the skin, characterized by redness, itching, and the outbreak of oozing vesicular lesions which become encrusted and scaly. It is noncontagious.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An inflammatory disease of the skin, characterized by the presence of redness and itching, an eruption of small vesicles, and the discharge of a watery exudation, which often dries up, leaving the skin covered with crusts; -- called also
tetter ,milk crust , andsalt rheum .
WordNet 3.0
- n. generic term for inflammatory conditions of the skin; particularly with vesiculation in the acute stages
Etymologies
- New Latin, from Greek ekzema, from ekzein, to break out, boil over : ek-, out; see ecto- + zein, to boil; see yes- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Papular eczema (_eczema papulosum_) is characterized by the appearance, usually in numbers, of discrete, aggregated or closely-crowded, reddish, pin-head-sized acuminated or rounded papules.”
“Erythematous eczema (_eczema erythematosum_) begins as one or more small or large, irregularly outlined hyperæmic macules or patches, with or without slight or marked swelling, and with more or less itching or burning.”
“Squamous eczema (_eczema squamosum_) may be defined as a clinical variety, the chief symptoms of which are a variable degree of scaliness, more or less thickening, infiltration, and redness, with commonly a tendency to cracking or fissuring of the skin, especially when the disease is seated about the joints.”
“Pustular eczema (_eczema pustulosum_, _eczema impetiginosum_) is probably the least common of all the varieties.”
“Now, the term eczema usually refers to atopic eczema, or atopic dermatitis (atopic means “allergic”), which is a complex genetic disorder that results in defective skin barriers, reduced innate skin immune responses, and exaggerated immune (T cell) responses to environmental allergens that lead to chronic skin inflammation.”
“The term eczema is now applied very generally to eruptions of all kinds that depend on internal disorders or constitutional conditions and that tend to recurrences and inveteracy.”
“The term eczema is broadly applied to a range of skin conditions.”
“Eczema is a form of inflammation of the upper layers of the skin and the term eczema is broadly applied to a range of persistent or recurring skin rashes.”
“A paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says eczema is thought to be a trigger for other allergic conditions.”
“Time Freedom Fighter said ... eczema penisAtopic eczema is the most common type of eczema and is sometimes linked with hay fever and asthma in several patients.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘eczema’.
-
Gesundheit
Words that sound like sneezes
zucchini, zoology, wysiwyg, woodchuck, withhold, wichita, vacuum, twelfth, syzygy, synchronous, swatch, supersede and 120 more...
-
Itchy
wool, cat dander, ragweed, poison ivy, dust mite, poison oak, nettles, pollen, mosquito bite, chigger, dog dander, pet dander and 39 more...
-
respelt
'He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that LOOK as though they are spelt wrongly but aren't.'
Re Otto Tibbit's father, fourteen times Scrabble champio...skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhoea, taxiing, piing, safariing, qamchiing, dooziing, hongiing and 49 more...
chained_bear Those Merriam bastards... Jun 16, 2010
chelster N.B. to those speakers who say or were taught to say ek-ZEE-muh (or eg-), with stress on the second syllable and a long e as in see. This variant has been heard since the 19th century, but there is no etymological basis for it, medical references from the 19th century to the present have ignored it, and numerous authorities have frowned upon it: e.g., “The pronunciation ek-ZEE-muh, though common, is contrary to the Latin accentuation” — Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1909; “eczema . . . is pronounced EK-ze-ma, not eg-ZEE-ma,” John B. Opdycke, Don’t Say It, 1939. Although you will find it listed in current dictionaries, second-syllable stress remains distinctly second-class, and modern authorities do not countenance it.
N.B. to cbbudman, regarding the line you saw over the medial e in "earlier dictionaries": I'm guessing that you consulted one or more of the G. & C. Merriam dictionaries, which used a horizontal line with a short vertical stem to indicate the lightened sound of e in words like event and serene. It looks a bit like a macron (the long-e mark) but it isn't.
— The Orthoepist Jun 15, 2010
chained_bear Those American Heritage Dictionary bastards... Jun 15, 2010
cbbudman American Heritage Dictionary is wrong with their pronunciation of eczema. I am 69 years old and the English teachers I had, taught us that when a word ends in a vowel, the vowel preceding the last consonant is to be pronounced as a long sound. Earlier dictionaries agree with me and show a line over the second E. Even dictionaries that show a so called secondary accepted pronunciation put the long sound first. It is properly pronounced Ek zee muh. Jun 15, 2010