syphilis

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Prostitutes and clients may spread sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, herpes, and AIDS.

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Definitions (8)

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  1. noun A chronic infectious disease caused by a spirochete (Treponema pallidum), either transmitted by direct contact, usually in sexual intercourse, or passed from mother to child in utero, and progressing through three stages characterized respectively by local formation of chancres, ulcerous skin eruptions, and systemic infection leading to general paresis.
  2. Word History
    In 1530 Girolamo Fracastoro, a physician, astronomer, and poet of Verona, published a poem entitled "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus,” translated as "Syphilis, or the French Disease.” In Fracastoro's poem the name of this dreaded venereal disease is an altered form of the name of the hero Syphilus, a shepherd who is supposed to have been the first victim of the disease. Where the name Syphilus itself came from is not known for certain, but it has been suggested that Fracastoro borrowed it from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Ovid's work Sipylus (spelled Siphylus in some manuscripts) is the oldest son of Niobe, who lived not far from Mount Sipylon in Asia Minor. Fracastoro's poem about Syphilus was modeled on the story of Niobe. Fracastoro went on to use the term syphilis again in his medical treatise De Contagione, published in 1546. The word that Fracastoro used in Latin was eventually borrowed into English, being first recorded in 1718.

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Etymologies (2)

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  1. New Latin, from "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus,” "Syphilis, or the French Disease,” title of a poem by Girolamo Fracastoro (1478?-1553), from Syphilus, the poem's protagonist.

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  1. Also siphilis; from French syphilis = Spanish sifilis = Portuguese syphilis = Italian sifilide = German syphilis = Swedish Danish syfilis, from New Latin syphilis, syphilis, a word introduced into technical use by Sauvages, from the name of a Latin poem by Hieronimo Fracastorio (Hieronymus Fracastorius), an Italian physician and poet (1483–1553), entitled “Syphilus, sive Morbi Gallici libri tres,” and published in 1530, the name being derived from that of Syphilus, a character in the poem. The name Syphilus is a fanciful one, having a Greek aspect but no actual Greek basis. If either of the usual conjectures is correct, it should be *Symphilus, from Greek σύν, with, + φίλος, loving, fond (φιλεῑν, love), or *Syophilus (a name appropriate for a swineherd), from σῦς, hog, + φίλος, loving (φιλεῑν, love).
 

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/ˈsɪfɪlɪs/
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