Endocarditis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medical condition characterized by the inflammation of the heart's inner lining, often resulting from infection and leading to damage of the heart's chambers and valves
2. This ailment involves the swelling of the endocardium, which can arise from various infectious agents affecting the heart's interior structures
3. An illness involving swelling and irritation of the heart's inner lining caused mainly by bacterial or fungal infection

Etymology: Endocarditis is a modern coinage built from Greek parts, and its suffix has an older history than the word itself. The first half comes from "endocardium," the thin membrane lining the inside of the heart, itself formed from the Greek prefix "endo-" meaning "within" and "kardia," meaning "heart." The second half, "-itis," is the medical suffix for inflammation. It descends from the Ancient Greek suffix "-ītis," used to form adjectives and nouns linked to diseases, which passed into Latin as "-itis" and was then used in New Latin, the scientific Latin of early modern and later medicine, to name new inflammatory conditions. So "endocarditis" literally means inflammation of the inner lining of the heart. It was built by doctors and anatomists to name a condition they could now describe precisely, rather than inheriting an ancient term. Ancient Greek physicians had no word for it because they had no way to isolate the disease as a distinct entity.