Hydraemia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An abnormal condition in which the blood is diluted with too much water, lowering its concentration of cells and solids
2. A state of the bloodstream containing an excessive amount of fluid, making the blood unusually thin and watery
3. Watery dilution of the blood caused by an overabundance of water, often seen in the context of certain medical disorders

Etymology: Hydraemia is a medical term for an excess of water in the blood, and its construction is plain: it joins "hydro-", from Greek "hydor" meaning water, with "-aemia", from Greek "haima" meaning blood, a suffix that appears in many clinical coinages such as anaemia and leukaemia. The result is a literal description of the condition: water in the blood. The pattern behind it is worth noticing. Physicians in the 18th and 19th centuries built a large family of diagnostic terms by attaching Greek components to "-aemia" (or the spelling "-emia" in American usage), so that the suffix signals a blood condition and the prefix names the specific abnormality. Hydraemia is one member of that family, and its meaning can be read straight off its parts without any further history.

Synonyms: hydremia