Rheumatism

Rheumatism

Noun · /ˈruːmətɪzəm/ · a condition causing pain and inflammation in joints, muscles, or connective tissues

Definition

Rheumatism is a broad, non-clinical term for any condition that causes pain, stiffness, swelling, or inflammation in the joints, muscles, or connective tissues of the body. In medical practice today, doctors use more precise diagnoses — rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, gout — but in everyday language, rheumatism covers all of them loosely. An older person saying my rheumatism is playing up is describing joint pain without specifying which condition. The word is particularly common in British English among older speakers, used naturally and without embarrassment.

Origin

From Greek rheuma, meaning a flow or stream — originally referring to bodily fluids believed to flow through the body and cause inflammation when they collected in joints. Greek physicians and later medieval doctors held a humoral theory of disease: fluids could flow to the wrong places and cause problems. Rheuma entered Latin as rheumatismus, and English adopted it in the seventeenth century. The same Greek root gives us rheumatoid, rheumatology, and the word rheum — the watery fluid in the eyes.