What’s In a Name?
What it is not.
Eczema is one of those words that no one really learns how to spell in school. It is variously slaughtered as exzema, ecsema, exsema, and ekzeema. The real spelling, of course, is e-c-z-e-m-a. Chances are, you have an inkling of an idea of what eczema is. Just in case you don’t, eczema is not a plant, animal, fungi, or planet. I’ll explain more about what it is in another post.
How to pronounce it.
If you’re going to do more than just read about it, it helps to know how to pronounce it, so here’s to saying the word right. There should be little confusion about how to make the right sounds. What isn’t so easy is where to place the emphasis in the word. Grammarians, doctors, and phonics teachers alike all agree that the emphasis should be placed on the first syllable: EC’-zema. If you slip up, and call it ecZEE’ma, that’s ok because it’s considered one of the accepted pronunciations. However, in order to look most intelligent, stress the first syllable when you say the word.
What it means.
The origin of the word gives a pretty good idea of what it means. The word eczema is actually derived from a Greek word: ekzein, or ekzema. The Greek word was formed from two components. Ek means “out” and “zema” means to boil. Thus, at its grammatical roots, the word means “to boil out.”
That gives the picture of what eczema looks like—a breaking out or boiling out of the skin. The word picture, ascribed by ancient neologists, was probably just their description of what the condition looked like, and perhaps their understanding that the blood was boiling, as it were, out of the skin.