American Heritage Dictionary Entry: diabetes HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key. Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window. guide to the dictionary THE USAGE PANEL The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. The Panelists NEED HELP SOLVING A CROSSWORD PUZZLE? Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. -- AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. OPEN DICTIONARY PROJECT Share your ideas for new words and new meanings of old words! Start Sharing Now! -- See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series! Find out more! INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES? Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com di·a·be·tes (dī′ə-bētĭs, -tēz) Share: Tweet n. 1. Any of a group of diseases characterized by high blood sugar levels caused by insufficient production of insulin, impaired response to insulin, or both, especially: a. Type 1 diabetes. b. Type 2 diabetes. c. Gestational diabetes. In all subsenses also called diabetes mellitus. 2. See diabetes insipidus. [Middle English diabete, from Medieval Latin diabētēs, from Greek, compass, siphon, diabetes, from diabainein, diabē-, to stride or stand with legs apart, cross over, straddle : dia-, dia- + bainein, to go; see gwā- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] Word History: Ancient Greek physicians gave the name diabētēs to a chronic disease characterized by excessive urination—probably what we now know as diabetes insipidus. (Later, the name was also used for a different disease, diabetes mellitus, in which increased urination is a common symptom.) The term is ultimately derived from the verb diabainein, "to stride or stand with the legs apart, step across, pass over," but it is not certain how diabētēs came to describe the disease. Diabētēs has a variety of other meanings in Greek, including "compass" (since a compass can be likened to a person striding with the legs spread wide) and "siphon" (perhaps because a siphon straddles—so to speak—two containers and permits the passage of liquid from one to the other). The first known use of diabētēs as a designation for a disease is found in the works of Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who probably lived in the first century AD. Aretaeus's works became standard medical texts of the ancient and medieval world. One chapter of his work On the Causes and Signs of Chronic Diseases is devoted to a condition he calls diabētēs. Aretaeus, however, was not the first physician to give the condition this name, for he offers his own thoughts on the etymology of the term: "The disease seems to me to have acquired the name diabētēs, as if from the Greek word for siphon (diabētēs), because the fluid does not remain in the body." Some modern scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that as a medical term, diabētēs originally made reference to the straddling stance taken during urination by those with the disease—the intended meaning may have been "one standing with the legs planted firmly apart." Whatever its origin, diabētēs became the standard name for the disease in Greek and medieval medical Latin. Diabetes is first attested in English around 1425 in the spelling diabete, found in a Middle English translation of a Latin medical text by the French physician Guy de Chauliac (ca. 1300-1368): Auicen forsoþ in diabete graunteþ water of whey of shepis mylke. "In the case of diabetes, Avicenna forsooth gives water of the whey of sheep's milk." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices: Indo-European Roots Semitic Roots The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 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