The painful condition called shingles takes its name from Latin cingulum, meaning belt, because the inflammation often appears as a belt-like band around the torso. The Latin root of cingulum, cingere, meaning to gird, is also the source of cinch, a strap across the belly of a horse, and precinct, an area encircled on a map. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Shingles” Comes from Latin”
Some friends and I were talking about a friend who had a painful bout with shingles. Oh yeah, you know that’s that painful rash. The reason it’s called shingles is actually pretty cool. It comes from the Latin cingulum, which means belt. And usually when shingles appears, it’s a stripe of blisters that wraps around just part of your body, right about where you might have a belt.
Oh, interesting.
Isn’t that wild?
And then just got corrupted from the Latin into English?
Yep.
That’s pretty interesting.
So it has nothing to do with shingles on a roof.
Nothing.
No, no, no.
No, and what’s actually really cool is that it goes back to an old Latin word that means to gird or surround.
And you see the same root of cingulum in words like precinct, which has a boundary drawn around it, and cinch, you know, like you cinch a saddle on a horse, right?
Gotcha. Well, that’s pretty cool.
Yeah, how about that? Hit us up words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
