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malacia. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
malacia, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
malacia in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
malacia you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From Latin malacia, from Ancient Greek μαλακία (malakía, “softness, sickness”).
Noun
malacia (countable and uncountable, plural malacias)
- (medicine, pathology) Abnormal softening of organs or tissues of the human body.
1860, Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow, Cellular Pathology as Based Upon Physiological and Pathological Histology, page 318:As soon, namely, as a process of this sort sets in in a compound organ, as for example, a muscle, a palpable myo-malacia is certainly produced when all the muscular elements at a given point are at once affected; but it happens far more frequently that, in the course of a muscle, only a comparatively small number of primitive fasciculi are affected, whilst the others remain almost intact.
- (medicine, obsolete) An abnormal craving for certain types of food.
Derived terms
Translations
softening of organs or tissue
References
Anagrams
Italian
Etymology
From Latin malacia, from Ancient Greek μαλακία (malakía, “softness, sickness”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ma.laˈt͡ʃi.a/
- Rhymes: -ia
- Hyphenation: ma‧la‧cì‧a
Noun
malacia f (plural malacie)
- (pathology) malacia
Derived terms
Anagrams
Latin
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μαλακία (malakía, “softness”), from μᾰλᾰκός (malakós, “soft”).
Pronunciation
Noun
malacia f (genitive malaciae); first declension
- a calm at sea, dead calm
c. 52 BCE,
Julius Caesar,
Commentarii de Bello Gallico 3.15:
- Ac iam conversis in eam partem navibus quo ventus ferebat, tanta subito malacia ac tranquillitas exstitit ut se ex loco movere non possent.
- And they had headed all their vessels down the wind, when suddenly a calm so complete and absolute came on that they could not stir from the spot.
c. 65 CE,
Seneca the Younger,
Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 67.14–15:
- Nihil habere, ad quod exciteris, ad quod te concites, cuius denuntiatione et incursu firmitatem animi tui temptes, sed in otio inconcusso iacere non est tranquillitas; malacia est.
- If you have nothing to stir you up and rouse you to action, nothing which will test your resolution by its threats and hostilities; if you recline in unshaken comfort, it is not tranquillity; it is merely a flat calm.
- (medicine) loss of appetite, nausea
Declension
First-declension noun.
Derived terms
References
- “malacia”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “malacia”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers