Haemorrhaphilia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medical condition marked by a tendency to bleed heavily and for a long time after even minor injury
2. A bleeding disorder in which blood fails to clot properly, so wounds or bruises may leak blood for an extended period
3. The inherited or acquired susceptibility to prolonged haemorrhage, caused by a deficiency in the body's natural clotting system

Etymology: This is not an established medical term. It looks like a blend of two real words: "haemorrhage," from Greek "haimorrhagia" (haima, "blood," plus rhegnynai, "to burst forth"), and "haemophilia," the name for the inherited blood-clotting disorder. The second element, "-philia," comes from Greek "philia," meaning "love" or "fondness," so the coinage is a little misleading. Haemophilia itself was named in 1828 by the German physician Johann Lukas Schönlein, who combined "haima" with "philia" to describe a condition in which bleeding is hard to stop. Because the blend is probably a spelling error or a nonstandard coinage, a reader would most likely be looking for "haemophilia" or "haemorrhage."