WORD OF THE DAY.
The Word of the Day comes again from "Bone China" by Laura Purcell.
PHTHISIS
NOUN
Phthisis is an archaic name for tuberculosis. A person afflicted with tuberculosis in the old days was destined to dwindle and waste away like Mimi, the heroine of Puccini's 1896 opera "La Boheme."
pulmonary tuberculosis or a similar progressive wasting disease. synonyms: thinness · boniness · scrawniness · skinniness · scragginess · starvation · underfeeding · undernourishment · cadaverousness · gauntness · haggardness · attenuation · atrophy · anorexia antonyms: obesity
ORIGIN mid 16th century: via Latin from Greek, from phthinein‘to decay’.