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angina pectoris
angina Latin, a choking pain + pectoris Latin, of the chest
Angina pectoris is excruciating pain starting in the left chest and shooting down the left arm and sometimes into the neck, caused by low oxygen supply to the muscles of the heart. Two small branches of the aorta called the coronary arteries supply oxygenated blood to heart muscles.
Coronarius is a Latin adjective meaning like a corona or a crown. Corona is the Latin word for garland or wreath or any circular object placed on the head to honour a victory in war or in sport, for the wreath or garland was often made of twined flowers or the small fronds of certain palm trees or the leaves of the acanthus plant. Classical Greek had a similar, cognate word, korone, with similar meanings.
The arteries are termed coronary because, to early anatomists dissecting the human body, these arterial vessels appeared to encircle the upper area of the heart like a crown.
If these coronary arteries become hardened, degenerated and clogged with lipids (fatty deposits), as in atherosclerosis, they cannot expand properly to supply increased blood to the heart during times of exertion. The agonizing pain of angina stops the victim from all exertion and tells him something is wrong with the coronary arteries. Diet, drugs like amyl nitrite, reduced exertion, and surgery to increase blood supply to the heart all assist in preventing recurrence.
Here too is the source of the lay term coronary for a kind of heart attack, namely a myocardial infarction or occlusion.
Other Corona Words
coronalis crown-like + sutura Latin, a stitch, a seam, a sewing
The coronal suture is the crown-like line of juncture of the frontal bone and the two parietal bones of the skull. The coronal suture runs across the top of the skull almost from ear to ear.
A suture is a type of joint found only in bones of the skull. The cranial bones of a newborn baby are not completely joined. This allows compression of the skull during birth, and later permits the brain to grow, before its protective cranium becomes virtually solid bone. In an adult the two bones united by a suture joint are not movable.
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The letter A labels a side or lateral view of the coronal suture.
coroner Middle English, an officer of the Crown, literally ‘a crowner’
Coroner equalled crowner, because in England where the office began, he was always an officer of the British Crown who at first led petitions to the king, and then inquests into suspicious deaths. Nowadays a coroner is often a medical doctor with expert knowledge of pathology.
The Root *ankh
Other English words and foreign terms contain the same basic root as the word angina, namely the ancient Indo-European root *ankh ‘narrow, constricted.’
Anger was originally felt to be a narrow, tight, choking rage.
Anguish is constrictive distress of slighter force than anger.
To angle is to fish with a hook. An angler is such a fisherman. Both words have the Old English or Anglo-Saxon root angul meaning a fish hook or a thing bent and narrowed.
Anglo-Saxon recalls the Angles, Germanic invaders of Britain from a narrow angle of land between peninsular Denmark and the European mainland. Angle-land evolved into the modern English word England. And Ænglisc, originally a term for the Angles' dialect, became the word English.
Angostura bitters is a digestive tonic made from the bark of a Venezuelan tree. Both tree and tonic are named after the Venezuelan town of Angostura, which in Spanish means ‘the narrows of a river.’
Angst in German is an anxious, depressed feeling.
Ankle, where the leg is slender or narrow, and the joint where the foot hooks to the leg, where the foot forms an angle with the leg, comes from Old English ancleow which has the same *ankh root.
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