Lientery

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of diarrhea in which partly digested food passes through the bowels without being fully absorbed
2. A digestive disorder marked by the rapid discharge of undigested food in loose stools
3. Loose, frequent bowel movements that contain food which has passed through the gut unchanged

Etymology: Lientery is a medical term for a diarrhea in which undigested food passes through the bowel almost unchanged. Its Greek ancestor, "leientería," joins "leîos," meaning smooth, and "énteron," meaning intestine, so the name literally describes smooth intestines, a reference to the way food slides through without being broken down. The Greek word passed into Latin as "leinteria," and the English term was borrowed from that Latin form. The Latin route is a reminder of how much of medicine's vocabulary was built from Greek by Roman and later European writers. Physicians who wrote in Latin kept the Greek roots but adapted their spelling and endings, so the word that reached English was already a learned, technical coinage rather than everyday speech. Its French relative, "lientérie," shows the same path through medieval medical writing.

Synonyms: diarrhoea, flux