The medical term pediculosis
is used in both English and Spanish to refer not to a particular type of
infection but, rather, to an ‘infestation with lice’ in the body of a person,
typically in the head. The word lice
[ˈlaɪ̯s] is the plural of louse [ˈlaʊ̯s],
and it is much more common than the singular in English. It refers to ‘any of
numerous small, flat-bodied, wingless biting or sucking insects of the orders Mallophaga or Anoplura, many of which are external parasites on various animals,
including humans’ (AHD). Lice are blood-feeding ectoparasitic insects of the
order Phthiraptera.
The term pediculosis
typically refers to Pediculosis capitis
‘pediculosis of the head’, which is the infestation of the head with a specific
species of head louse, Pediculus humanus
capitis ‘head louse’ (Sp. ‘piojo
de la cabeza’ or ‘piojo del cuero
cabelludo humano’). In addition, there are two other possible types of
infestations, namely on the body, known as Pediculosis
corporis ‘pediculosis of the body’, produced by Pediculus humanus or Pediculus
humanus corporis, and of the pubic area, known as Pediculosis pubis or Phthiriasis
pubis, infected by Pthirus pubis
‘crab louse’ (mistaken but accepted form of Phthirus).
This last type of lice is popularly known in English as crabs or pubic lice and
in Spanish as ladillas. (Sp. ladilla is obviously a diminutive
derived from lado, from the Latin
adjective lātus meaning
‘wide, broad’ as well as ‘spacious, extensive’. Spanish lado was also an adjective meaning ‘broad’, but also ‘flat’, until at
least the 13th century. The reason for the name for the insect is supposedly
its flat and broad shape.[1]
Figure 140:
Pediculus humanus capitis.[i]
The word for louse
in Spanish is piojo, a patrimonial
word that is related to the technical term for this condition. The English adjective
lousy [ˈlaʊ̯.zɪ] is derived from the singular louse and originally, it also meant ‘infected with lice’, equivalent
to Sp. piojoso/a. Today, Eng. lousy is not used with that literal
meaning, however, since the word has acquired other figurative meanings. Its
new senses can be paraphrased as ‘extremely contemptible; nasty’, as in a lousy trick, ‘very painful or
unpleasant’, as in a lousy headache,
or ‘inferior or worthless’, as in a lousy
play (AHD).
The term pediculosis
was created in the early 19th century in the medical world out of pediculus, diminutive of pēdis ‘a louse’ and the
medical New Latin suffix ‑osis. We
have already come across the suffix ‑osis,
which comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ‑ωσις
(-ōsis) ‘state, action’, but in medical terminology ‘abnormal condition’.
This Greek ending is found in ‑όω
(-óō) stem verbs to which the noun suffix ‑σις
(-sis) was, which is equivalent to the Latin noun ending ‑ĭōn‑.
Lat. pēdis
(genitive: pēdis,
accusative pēdem) was the
word for ‘louse’ in Latin. However Lat. pēdis
was also the genitive of the word pēs
‘foot’. Perhaps because of this confusing similarity and because of the small
size of the bug, the typical term for ‘louse’ in Latin was the diminutive pĕdīcŭlus or pĕdĭcŭlus
(it is not clear whether the i was
short or long), which can also be the diminutive of pēs and thus be translated as ‘little foot’, as well as
‘footstalk’. Others have suggested there is a connection between the root ped‑ in the bug’s name to the verb pēdĕre ‘to
break wind, fart’ (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root *pesd- ‘to fart’), presumably because of
the unpleasant smell associated with infections (cf. Sp. pedo ‘fart’ and dialectal peer(se)
‘to fart’).
Spanish piojo
‘louse’ is a patrimonial descendant of Vulgar Latin peduclus, a variant of peduculus,
a descendant of the diminutive pēdicŭlus,
a word that we discussed in Chapter 16, §16.7. English has also borrowed
the word pedicle from Lat. pĕdicŭlus. It is
used in biology (anatomy and zoology) to refer to ‘a small stalk-like connecting
structure’ or the ‘footstalk of a plant’, and in medicine, to ‘part of a skin
graft left temporarily attached to its original site’ (COED). The Spanish also has learned versions
of this word to express these two meanings, namely pedúnculo for the former and pedículo
for the latter.
[1] The modern Spanish noun lado
‘side’ comes from a different word, namely from Lat. latus, gen. lateris,
‘side, flank’. Yet a third Lat. lātus
was the passive participle of the verb ferre
‘to carry’ (ferō, ferre, tulī/tetulī, lātum).
[i] Source: By Transferred
from en.wikipedia to Commons. This media comes from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with
identification number #377. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=482602
(2018.05.03)
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