Epistaxia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The occurrence of bleeding from the nose, often due to irritation or trauma of the nasal mucosa
2. A medical term describing the discharge of blood from the nostrils, usually originating from the nasal cavity
3. A condition characterized by the involuntary release of blood from the nasal passages, commonly resulting from various injury or health issues

Etymology: Epistaxis is a medical term for bleeding from the nose, and its roots are plain: it comes from Greek "epistaxis", from "epistazein", meaning "to drip upon" or "to bleed drop by drop", built from "epi" ("upon") and "stazein" ("to drip"). The Greek word was a verb-derived noun describing liquid falling in drops, and the nose-bleeding sense is a narrowing of that general dripping idea. The word reached English as a technical borrowing from medical Latin, which took the Greek term over with little change. Its use is confined almost entirely to medicine and to writing about it, so it has stayed a specialist word rather than passing into everyday speech. Ordinary speakers say "nosebleed" instead.

Synonyms: nosebleed, epistaxis, nasal hemorrhage