- king's evil
- "scrofula," late 14c., translates M.L. regius morbus; so called because the kings of England and France claimed to heal it by their touch. In England, the custom dates from Edward the Confessor and was continued through the Stuarts (Charles II touched 90,798 sufferers) but was ended by the Hanoverians (1714).
- comical
- early 15c., "comic," from comic (or L. comicus) + -al (1). Meaning "funny" is from 1680s. Earlier M.E. had an identical word meaning "epileptic," from L. morbus comitialis "epilepsy."
- morbid
- 1650s, "of the nature of a disease, indicative of a disease," from L. morbidus "diseased," from morbus "sickness, disease," from root of mori "to die," or from PIE base *mor- "to rub, pound, wear away" (cf. Gk. marainein "to consume, exhaust," marasmus "consumption"). Transferred use, of mental states, is from 1777. Related: Morbidly.
- syphilis
- 1718, Mod.L., originally from the title of a poem, "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus" "Syphilis, or the French Disease," 1530, by Veronese doctor Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553), which tells the tale of the shepherd Syphilus, supposed to be the first sufferer from the disease. Fracastoro first used the word as a generic term for the disease in 1546 treatise "De Contagione." Why he chose the name is unknown; it may be intended as Latin for "Pig-lover," though there was also a Sipylus, a son of Niobe, in Ovid.
- cholera
- late 14c., "choler, bile, melancholy," from L.L. cholera, from Gk. kholera "a type of disease characterized by diarrhea, supposedly caused by choler" (Celsus), from khole "gall, bile," from khloazein "to be green," from khloros (see Chloe). But another sense of khole was "drainpipe, gutter." Revived 1560s as a name for a severe digestive disorder (rarely fatal to adults); and 1704 (especially as cholera morbus), for a highly lethal disease endemic in India, periodically breaking out in global epidemics.