Myxomatosis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A fatal viral disease of rabbits, spread by insects, that causes swelling and lesions around the eyes, nose and mouth
2. An infectious illness affecting rabbits, transmitted mainly by mosquitoes and fleas, marked by severe swelling of the head and face
3. A deadly infection in rabbits caused by a poxvirus, producing tumour-like growths and eventual death in wild and domestic populations

Etymology: Myxomatosis is a textbook coinage: it combines "myxoma," a medical term for a tumour made of mucus-like tissue, with the suffix "-osis," used for abnormal conditions. The disease it names is a viral infection of rabbits, and the name tells you what doctors saw in the animals, a tumour-like swelling of the skin and mucous membranes. The suffix has a longer ancestry than the disease. "-osis" passed into English from New Latin, where it had been borrowed from Ancient Greek "-ōsis," a noun-forming ending that named a process or a condition. The Greek ending itself descends from older forms in the same family, so the suffix has been used for conditions of the body for more than two thousand years, long before any rabbit was infected. "Myxoma" is built from the Greek "myxa," meaning mucus, plus the same "-oma" ending that appears in words like "carcinoma," which names a tumour. Put together, the name describes a body disorder marked by mucus-like growths, and it was coined for a scientific audience rather than for everyday speech.