Etymology

psittacosis

P3S1I1T1T1A1C3O1S1I1S1

Today it means: An infection by Chlamydia bacteria, caught from infected birds, and characterised by fever, pneumonia and headaches. Full definition →

Latin psittacus
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Latin · derived frompsittacus“parrot”
  2. English todaypsittacosis

From Latin psittacus (“parrot”) + -osis. By surface analysis, psittac- + -osis.

Words from the same roots

Latinpsittacus all →

psittac-psittacism

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.