Beware the Epizooty!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charles from Lambert, Montana.

Hi, Charles. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Charles.

Well, I farm and ranch in eastern Montana, and to give you a little background, my family home stayed here in 1909.

Now, that may have nothing to do with my word.

Okay.

But growing up, I used to hear the word epizootie to describe every form of illness or disease,

Like someone got the epizootie, don’t get you the epizootie.

It could have been a cold to cancer.

Who knows?

Anyway, I thought it was just a made-up family word,

But I found later in life that it was a deer disease, epizootic hemorrhagic,

And I was just curious if that’s my own family quirky word

Or if it was something other cultures used.

Yeah, yeah, epizootic is a really interesting word.

It was around for a while, and then you may remember that in 1878,

There was this horrible example of epizootic disease that was circulating among horses. This

Was a really big deal back in that day. It was this terrible disease that was a rasping cough,

And the horses were weak and feverish, and sometimes they just died of exhaustion.

And this example of epizootic disease was so bad that it affected so many horses

That it briefly brought the country to a standstill because in the 1870s, you know,

The United States was so dependent on horses. It was kind of like the grid going down or gas

Supplies drying up because farmers couldn’t take their goods to market and canal boats backed up

And horses couldn’t drag coal out of the mines and firefighters had terrible trouble hauling

Water. So it really forced this reckoning in the United States, this equine influenza that people

Called the epizootic. It forced a reckoning with how dependent our country was on horses and also

How horses were treated. And the word epizootic itself, which refers to different kinds of diseases

That affect animals, including deer, as you said. Epizootic is actually modeled on the Greek word

Epidemic, which is a disease on a whole group of people. It comes from the Greek word demos,

Which means people, as in democracy. So we had the word epidemic already, and epizootic was

Modeled after that because the zoo in there, that Z-O-O, means animal. So an epizootic disease was

One that affected a whole population of animals. So that’s some of the background. And then over

Time, people just started referring to any kind of disease, even just an imaginary one or just a

Vague kind of illness. Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of when you say you’ve got the crud, it doesn’t

Really mean something specific. Yeah. Thank you so much, Charles, and good luck on the ranch.

Oh, thank you. That’s nice to talk to you. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

But you’re not going to get the epizootie or the cootie if you call us,

So pick up that phone, 877-929-9673.

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