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pellagra

noun
/pɪˈlaɡɹə/UK

Etymology

From Italian pellagra, from Latin pellis (“skin”) + Ancient Greek ἄγρα (ágra, “seizure, attack, catching”).

  1. derived from ἄγρα — “seizure, attack, catching”
  2. derived from pellis
  3. borrowed from pellagra

Definitions

  1. A disease characterised by skin lesions and mental confusion, primarily caused by a…

    A disease characterised by skin lesions and mental confusion, primarily caused by a niacin deficiency.

    • In 1755 the French physician Gaspar Casal (1680–1759) published an account of pellagra, then a new disease in Spain.
    • Mixing the alkali into the recipe in the right way chemically releases the otherwise unavailable niacin in the corn, which stops pellagra in its tracks, and allowed corn-based agricultural populations to grow and spread.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for pellagra. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA