Origin of Cataract

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Melissa Powell.

Hi, Melissa. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Melissa.

Hey, Martha. Hey, Grant.

Hey, where are you calling from?

Shreveport, Louisiana.

All right.

All right, welcome to the show.

Sounds like you’re on the tail end of a cold or something.

Well, I’ve got a little bit of a hoarse throat.

Oh, I’m sorry.

I am too.

Well, you probably know that there’s been a lot of rain in Louisiana and Texas.

I was watching rain fall down one day, and it was just like a waterfall going down the steps.

And I thought about the word cataract, and I said, I wonder why it means waterfall and also an eye problem.

So, of course, what did I do?

I went and looked it up in the dictionary, and it gave both definitions, but it didn’t tell me why.

It’s the same word.

You know, I think it comes from a Greek word that means waterfall.

Yeah, you’re right.

It is kind of confusing, but there is an answer for that.

Cool.

It goes back to the Latin word kataracta, which comes from older Greek words that mean a waterfall and the idea of water rushing down.

But the interesting thing is that in antiquity, the word kataracta also referred to one of those iron and timber heavy gates that are hung outside of a city to protect against invading hordes.

The portcullis.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s called a portcullis.

The kind of thing that they drop so the enemy can’t come in, right?

Yeah, exactly.

But you can still shoot arrows through.

Yeah.

You see that, for example, in the main entrance to the ancient city of Pompeii.

There’s the portcullis, the big iron and timber door that drops down.

And what you could do was let the enemy come in to the main gate of the city, and then the portcullis drops behind them, and then you’ve got them trapped.

Oh, pour the boiling oil on them and so forth.

Well, oil was expensive.

They didn’t actually.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, but.

Arrows then, rocks.

Arrows, hot sand, that kind of thing.

But anyway, the whole idea comes from the notion of something falling with great force and crashing like a cataract being a waterfall.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So for your eye.

Yeah.

It’s a barrier coming down over your lens, right?

So that’s what a cataract is.

It’s a filmy, translucent or even opaque growth in your eye that blocks your vision.

It comes down and blocks, just like those ancient gates blocking the enemy.

So the figurative usage made it split off, and so now, even in English, we have these two meanings still.

Yeah, how cool is that?

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Now, I also have another question about cataract.

When did it start being used for the eye problem, Dina?

That’s a good question.

Well, at least the 1500s.

Okay.

That sounds about right.

And you’ll find, you know, there’s always that long history of Greek and Latin being used in medicine and science.

So I’m not surprised to find it.

There are a lot of Greek words that use that prefix, kata, meaning down.

So like a catastrophe is literally a downturn.

A cataclysm originally in English meant a flood.

It meant inundating with water.

So stuff coming down.

Sort of like what you’re experiencing in Louisiana, it sounds like.

Well, I hope things improve there.

And I hope we help.

Thank you.

Take care now, Melissa.

Okay, you too.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

This is a show about words and language and how we use them.

I know that you spend your days thinking about the way that language is so insidious.

It’s a word pop up and you’re like, why do we say that?

This is the place to find out.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Twitter at Wayword and find us on Facebook.