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. an atrophy of the body or part of the body, especially pulmonary tuberculosis
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. 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
- Latin, from Greek, from phthinein, to waste away.
Examples
“The term phthisis, consumption, appears first in Greek literature.”
WN.com - Articles related to Mekong states to confront China over low river level
“We were accused and convicted of pulmonary phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians.”
Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician
“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.”
Kindle-licious on Wodehouse’s Psmith: Love is an Umbrella | Spontaneous ∂erivation
“+ 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’.
-
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...
-
Words with unusual spellings or pronunciations
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...
-
phth
Words with that sequence of letters
phthalo, phthalate, apophthegm, phthalocyanine, naphtha, phthor, phthisic, diphtheria, ophthalmologist, exophthalmia, diphthong, phthongometer and 52 more...
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