Hypohondria
Writing about words makes me light headed
hypochondria
high-poh-con-dree-uh
noun
Abnormal anxiety about the state of one’s health
Rare is the person who hasn’t left the consulting room of Dr. Google anxious and concerned that they have mere days left to live because something, somewhere, hurts.
This was all thrown into sharp relief for me a few days ago when my flatmate came home from the walk-in clinic at the local hospital in such a tizz that she had walked out with a cannula still in her arm (she’s fine, and with the help of a nurse friend we managed to remove the stray medical equipment in the hastily-sanitised kitchen).
‘Hypochondria’ is a fascinating little word because it actually refers to a part of the body. The Greek-speaking readership of Word of the Week will have spotted the prefix ‘hypo-’, meaning ‘under’ and appearing in other medical words like ‘hypothyroidism’ and ‘hypoglycaemia’, as well as more ‘general’ words like ‘hypothesis’. The ‘-chondria’ suffix is from the Greek word ‘kondros’ which means ‘cartilage’ and in this instance refers specifically to the breastplate or sternum. Together, therefore, the word refers to the area just underneath the ribs.
How, though, did this come to refer to anxiety about the state of one’s health? We can thank mediaeval physicians and their nonsense about the humours. In humour theory, an excess of black bile (which was believed to be produced in the spleen) would lead to melancholia.