Stercoral

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to or composed of fecal matter or waste from the bowels
2. Of, pertaining to, or characterized by the presence of excrement or feces
3. Involving or consisting of bodily waste material discharged from the intestines

Etymology: Stercoral comes from the Latin "stercus," meaning dung or excrement, and the suffix "-alis," which makes an adjective meaning "pertaining to." Its Latin source, "stercoralis," was used of things relating to dung, and the English adjective appeared in medical writing, where it describes anything connected with faeces. The Romans had a related word, "stercorarius," which was used for a dung-collector or a dung-cart attendant, showing how plainly the Latin root was tied to everyday agricultural work. The word is nearly always met in medicine, most often in the phrase "stercoral ulcer" or "stercoral impaction," a blockage of the bowel by hardened faeces. These clinical uses are formal coinages from Latin roots, so the term reads as a deliberately precise label rather than a folk word that grew up in speech.

Synonyms: fecal, excremental