Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A disease characterized by the wasting away or atrophy of the body or a part of the body.
- n. Tuberculosis of the lungs. No longer in scientific use.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A disease of the lungs, characterized by progressive consolidation of pulmonary tissue, with breaking down and the formation of cavities. This is so extensively, if not exclusively, pulmonary tuberculosis that the two names are often considered as equivalent. Also called
consumption .
Wiktionary
- n. archaic An atrophy of the body or part of the body, especially pulmonary tuberculosis.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) A wasting or consumption of the tissues. The term was formerly applied to many wasting diseases, but is now usually restricted to pulmonary phthisis, or consumption. See consumption.
WordNet 3.0
- n. involving the lungs with progressive wasting of the body
Etymologies
- From Latin phthisis, from Ancient Greek φθίσις (phthisis, "consumption, decline, wasting away"), from φθίω (phthiō, "I waste away"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin, from Greek, from phthinein, to waste away. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The term phthisis, consumption, appears first in Greek literature.”
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“We were accused and convicted of pulmonary phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians.”
“At last I discovered a cure for phthisis, which is also known as Phthoe, a disease for many centuries deemed incurable, and I healed many who are alive to this day as easily as I have cured the”
“For this kind of phthisis there is no hope of cure.”
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why What Medical Writers Say
“When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and vowed the man who rung”
“All I remember is that it claimed to cure a whole host of ailments, including “phthisis”of which I had never heardand boasted, “Makes children fat as pigs.””
Snake oil comes in all kinds of bottles | The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D.
“Apoplexy is no longer to be feared, but phthisis is there.”
“Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization.”
“The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.”
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“+ Cardan in his Encomium Podagrae reckoneth this among the Dona Podagrae, that they are delivered thereby from the phthisis and stone in the bladder.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘phthisis’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words with unusual spellings or pronu...
Herein are listed words with oddball spellings and words whose pronunciation does not reflect the spelling.
eleemosynary, Wednesday, colonel, posslq, zaqqum, qwerty, cinquefoil, qibla(h), minuscule, Cholmondeley, polyphloisboian, ptisan and 67 more...
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to lessen
words to shorten, weaken, or lessen
attenuate, attrition, assuage, effete, truncate, curtail, nadir, severance, obviate, phthisis, eviscerate
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Garbiage
word trash
parapluie, brobdingnagian, plié, segue, laconic, pastoral, phthisis, belly, synecdoche, apotheosis, sepulchral, mollification and 40 more...
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phth
Words with that sequence of letters
phthalo, phthalate, apophthegm, phthalocyanine, naphtha, phthor, phthisic, diphtheria, ophthalmologist, exophthalmia, diphthong, phthongometer and 52 more...
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nachchba's Words
stentorian, blasé, ennui, concinnity, melee, photokeratitis, skiffle, refulgence, mongrel, fakir, caid, eudaimonia and 215 more...
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Miscellaneous
‽, ☤, mandelbrot, angora rabbit, psychrolutes marc..., vampyroteuthis in..., basking shark, mano de desierto, underwater sculpt..., surgical dining, gyroscope, Derinkuyu and 161 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Notre Dame de Paris
From Notre Dame de Paris by good ole Victor Hugo. (Also called The Hunchback of Notre Dame.)
cuivres, diable, hawthorn, provost, epithalamium, affrighted, mendicants, vagrants, Styx, chimeras, coif, matagrabolise and 196 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1401 more...
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corpus medicorum
words describing medical conditions
decubitus, kernicterus, foetor, paroxysm, tarsorrhaphy, balanitis, porphyria, arcus senilis, coitus interruptus, in extremis, la belle indiffer..., xanthelasma and 184 more...
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Dain's Words
rabble, terminus, archaic, atavism, demiurge, waylay, syzygy, jocoserious, quark, entropy, cinnabar, shamble and 912 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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My Words
heuristic, malapropism, vicissitude, discursive, interstitial, velleity, phosphene, pandiculate, obdormition, vertiginous, flibbertigibbet, truculent and 128 more...
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favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 547 more...
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Units Of Language
Word:
-a unit of language consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.sulk, promenade, skulk, idle, subsequently, moody, paroxysm, felony, anent, generic, hallucinogen, synaesthesia and 215 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for phthisis.

knitandpurl "Sick with phthisis in this drizzling mist, I limp, sniffling, spitting bilic spit, itching livid skin (skin which is tingling with stinging pinpricks)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 55 May 22, 2010
chained_bear "They were deep in two extraordinary, unaccountable and lasting cases of remission in phthisis and tetraplegia when the chief huntsman came to say that Omar Pasha would now receive them."
--P. O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 190 Mar 25, 2008