Word of the Day
endemos
Endemic
Greek
English/ɛnˈdɛmɪk/Spanish/enˈðemiko/
“Greek endemos means 'dwelling in' a people or place. A disease that is endemic doesn't invade from outside—it lives there, permanently. It's the opposite of epidemic, which comes upon you.”
Endemos comes from Greek: en (in) + demos (people, district, nation). It describes something native to a place, something that dwells there. By the 1600s and 1700s, medical writers had borrowed the term. An endemic disease was one that dwelled permanently in a population. It didn't arrive suddenly. It was always there, part of the landscape.
4 stops · from Ancient Greece to Worldwide