''rheumatism'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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Primary

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''rheumatism'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

rheumatism - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

rheumatism (countable and uncountable, plural rheumatisms)

• (pathology) Any disorder of the muscles, tendons, joints, bones, nerves, characterized by pain, discomfort and disability.
  • ✤ And then as to your ſcurvys, and gouts, rheumatiſms, conſumptions, coughs and catarrhs, tar-vvater and turpentine vvill make you as ſound as a roach.¹
  • ✤ The old man had become a confirmed invalid, confined by chronic rheumatism to his chair.²
  • ✤ Terentia has a severe attack of rheumatism.³
• (pathology) Atrophic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis

Etymology

First attested 1601, from Latin rheumatismus (“rheum”), from Ancient Greek ῥευματισμός (rheumatismós, “humour, discharge, rheum”) from ῥευματίζομαι (rheumatízomai, “to suffer from a rheum”) from ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “stream, flow”) from ῥέω (rhéō, “to flow”)

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈɹu.məˌtɪz.əm/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (US, dialectal, obsolete) IPA: /ˈɹu.məˌtɪz/⁴

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

1. 1763 June 20 (first performance), Samuel Foote, The Mayor of Garret. A Comedy, […], London: […] P[aul] Vaillant, […], published 1764, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 4: ↩

2. 1874, Wilkie Collins, The Dead Alive: ↩

3. 1920, Cicero, translated by Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh, The Letters of Cicero: The Whole Extant Correspondence in Chronological Order, volume 1 (hardcover), London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., page 3: ↩

4. Hall, Joseph Sargent (2 March 1942), “3. The Consonants”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King’s Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § 3, page 91. ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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