Disease: A Word Built From Lack of Ease
A disease is a disorder of structure or function in a living thing. The word is transparent once you see it: dis-ease, the absence of comfort.
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting an organism, with identifiable signs and symptoms. The word is one of the most transparent in medical English: it is simply *dis* plus *ease*, and originally meant discomfort of any kind before it narrowed to illness.
- A disorder of the body or mind. *Heart disease.*
- A named condition. *Parkinson's disease.*
- Something harmful spreading through a group. *The disease of cynicism.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | disease | Infectious disease. |
| Adjective | diseased | Diseased tissue. |
| Related | illness | A long illness. |
| Related | sickness | Motion sickness. |
| Related | disorder | A sleep disorder. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Prevention is better than cure for most diseases.Countable when naming specific conditions.
- Heart disease remains the leading cause of death.Uncountable as a category.
- Diseased wood must be removed and burnt.The adjective, used of plants as well as bodies.
Disease, illness and sickness
- Disease — the objective condition, identifiable by a clinician
- Illness — the subjective experience of being unwell
- Sickness — the social role of being unwell, and in some uses nausea
- A person can have a disease without feeling ill, in the early stages of many conditions
- A person can feel ill without any disease being found, which does not make the illness unreal
From Old French *desaise*, from *des* (without) and *aise*, ease. In Middle English it meant any trouble or inconvenience, and only settled into its medical sense in the later Middle Ages.
Disease or illness?
Disease is the clinical condition. Illness is how it feels to the person. Medicine treats both, and they do not always match.
Why does the possessive appear in some names?
Conditions are named after the doctor who described them: Parkinson's disease, Crohn's disease. Style guides differ on whether to keep the apostrophe.