Exanthems

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of skin rashes characterized by eruptions often associated with infectious diseases
2. A sudden outbreak of widespread marks or spots on the skin, primarily seen in viral infections
3. Areas or patches of inflammation on the skin that can signify underlying illness or contagion

Etymology: "Exanthems" is the plural of "exanthem", and the word's core image is a flower. The Greek "exanthēma" came from "exanthein", meaning "to blossom out" or "to bloom forth": the prefix "ex-" ("out") joined to "anthos" ("flower"). So a skin eruption was named for something blooming outward from the body, the same botanical picture that gives many medical terms their vocabulary of rashes. The Greek noun passed into Latin as "exanthema" and was then borrowed into English directly from that Latin form, so the term is a learned, scholarly borrowing rather than something that came through everyday speech. The plural "exanthems" keeps the regular English pattern, while the older Latin plural "exanthemata" remains in specialist writing.