Avitamin

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medical condition resulting from a prolonged absence or severe deficiency of one or more essential vitamins in the diet
2. The state of illness that develops when the body has been deprived of a necessary vitamin over an extended period
3. A disorder brought on by the complete or near-total lack of a vitamin that the body needs to function properly

Etymology: "Avitamin" is a medical coinage built from Latin "a-", meaning "without" (from Greek "a-", the privative prefix), and "vitamin," itself a twentieth-century word. "Vitamin" was coined in 1912 by the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk, who thought these newly discovered dietary substances were "vital amines," since the first ones isolated contained nitrogen-based amine groups. Later research showed that not all vitamins are amines, and the word was shortened to "vitamine" and then "vitamin." Because "avitamin" is formed by simply attaching the prefix to "vitamin," it dates from the same early twentieth-century period, when physicians were identifying specific deficiency diseases such as scurvy and beriberi as lacks of particular nutrients. The term was used as a general label for such conditions, a way of grouping them under one heading without naming each vitamin. It is a plain technical formation, and its history is essentially that of "vitamin" with a negating prefix added.