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From New Latin-itis, from Ancient Greek-ῖτις(-îtis, “pertaining to”). This is the feminine form of adjectival suffix -ῑ́της(-ī́tēs). The English suffix derives from the feminine form due to its use with the feminine noun νόσος(nósos, “disease”), particularly with ἀρθρῖτις (νόσος)(arthrîtis (nósos), “disease of the joints”) (one of the earliest English borrowings from which the suffix was extracted and abstracted). Humorous sense by generalization.
What to Do About Senioritis: Make Your Senior Year Count, College Board. Accessed April 4, 2008.
Usage notes
While most of the derived terms theoretically have plurals in -itides (from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́τῐδες(-ī́tides), plural of -ῖτῐς(-îtis)), -itises (the regularized English plural), or both, these forms are rarely used, as the derived terms are mass nouns, so their plurals are called for only when referring to types. For example, hepatitides or hepatitises as "types of hepatitis" have some currency in the medical literature, but most other such plurals do not. There is a tendency in formal writing to prefer the classical suffix (when a plural is invoked at all); a typical example is that for the plural of arthritis referring to various types of arthritis, only arthritides is standard.
^ “What to Do About Senioritis: Make Your Senior Year Count”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), 2018 November 26 (last accessed), archived from the original on 1 March 2009