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[-] teft@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Because the disease name isn’t a plural of scleros.

Sclerosis (from the greek skleros meaning hard + osis meaning a disease) is the stiffening of tissue.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 2 months ago

osis meaning a disease

Just as additional info: this is correct for English. In Ancient Greek the suffix -ωσις/-ōsis is wider, basically "plop it on a verb to get a noun for process, action or result"; so it's a lot like one of English -ing suffixes (the one that makes nouns from verbs). e.g.

  • the falling = πτῶσις/ptôsis
  • the seizing = ἅλωσῐς/hálōsis
[-] juliebean@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

i think they know that. if you pluralized 'sclerosis', you'd expect to get 'scleroses'. just like pluralizing 'thrombosis' gets you 'thromboses'.

[-] teft@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The disease isn’t a plural. Which i already said.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

Scleroses would translate as “hardening diseases” though. There’s only one disease.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 9 points 2 months ago

Because that "multiple" doesn't refer to multiple hardening (σκλήρωσῐς/sklḗrōsis) events, but rather to hardening as something uncountable happening in multiple spots.

It's roughly "multiple hardening", note how the lack of a plural doesn't feel off in this one either.

For reference, in languages showing adjective-noun agreement, the adjective gets the singular (e.g. Portuguese "esclerose múltipla" - the plural would be "escleroses múltiplas").

this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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