Anthroponosis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A disease that is transmitted and maintained within the human population rather than passing in from animals
2. An infection that passes from one person to another and normally persists among people without an animal source
3. The category of illness that humans spread among themselves, as opposed to diseases carried over from other species

Etymology: The surprise here is in the spelling: the word looks like it ends in the common suffix "-osis", but that ending is not really a suffix at all. It comes from the Ancient Greek "nósos", meaning "disease", which is the same root found in "nosology", the classification of diseases. Joined to "anthrōpos", meaning "human being", it gives a term for illness that affects people specifically. The word belongs to a family that includes "zoonosis", a disease passed from animals to humans. Both were built on the same pattern: a Greek prefix naming who or what is affected, followed by "nósos". Because "anthropo-" and "-osis" happen to sit next to each other in the construction, the apparent "-osis" ending looks like a suffix, but the word is best understood as a compound of "anthropo-" and "nosos".