“Idiopathic”.

One of the possible excitement of life probably could be the discovery of words hitherto unknown to most of us.

One such word recently discovered on my adventurous trip to the word-world was “Idiopathic”. Its is an adjective word used primarily in the medicine-world. It means arising spontaneously or from obscure or unknown cause. It comes from the Greek word, ‘idios’, meaning [one’s own] + ‘pathos’, meaning [suffering]. Approximately it means “a disease of its own kind”

When the medical community cannot establish a cause for certain cases, it is said to be idiopathic. Idiopathic may shrink with the advancement of medicine and science. But it may remain outside the medical world. In our day to day life we envisage an overwhelming idiopathic situation. It tends to push us towards God[s] or makes us resign to our fate. There are ofcourse others who do neither of the above and keeps exloring all other angles of their life.

Perhaps idiopathic may be a high flying word to suppress or camouflage ignorance. At face value it looks like the word can also be broken up into two parts. ‘Idiot’ and ‘pathetic’. We are idiots because we don’t know what is causing it and its pathetic that we are useless and wretched in our ignorance.