Kalaemia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The concentration or level of potassium present in the bloodstream
2. The amount of potassium circulating in the blood at any given time
3. The state of having potassium dissolved and circulating within the blood

Etymology: "Kalaemia" is an alternative spelling of "kalemia," a medical term for having too much or too little potassium in the blood. The word is built from two parts: "kal(ium)," from the name of the element potassium (the Latin "kalium," which chemists derived from the Arabic "al-qaly," meaning the ashes of saltwort plants from which alkali was made), and "-emia," the suffix from Greek "haima," meaning blood, which medical writers use to name conditions of the blood. Potassium itself was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807, and the Latin name "kalium" was chosen to reflect its origin in plant ash. Physicians later attached the elemental name to "-emia" to describe blood chemistry, so the term is a modern coinage rather than an ancient one. The "k" spelling keeps the element's chemical symbol, K, visible in the word, while the "-ae-" spelling in "kalaemia" is simply a variant of the more common "kalemia."