Iridodiagnosis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Determining health conditions by examining patterns and features in the iris of the eye
2. Identifying bodily ailments through visual analysis of the iris
3. Assessing medical issues by interpreting markings and colors found in the eye's iris

Etymology: Iridodiagnosis is a modern coinage built from two Greek roots. Its second half, "diagnosis," comes from Ancient Greek "diagignōskein," meaning "to distinguish" or "to discern," formed from "dia-" (through, apart) and "gignōskein" (to know). The Greeks used it for telling one thing apart from another, and only later did the sense narrow to identifying a disease, which is how English took it up. The first half, "irido-," comes from the Greek "iris," which originally meant rainbow and later came to denote the coloured membrane of the eye. Put together, the word is a plain compound: "iris" plus "diagnosis," meaning diagnosis through the iris. Its ancestry is ancient, but the word itself is a recent invention, a technical label for a practice that claims to read health conditions from patterns in the coloured part of the eye.