DictionaryRoot: -ia
Greek
-ia
a state, quality, or condition
Forms
- -ia
Origin
An old Greek noun ending with earlier Indo-European ancestry.
Note
Modern scientific names reuse it widely; the ending itself does not name a disease or a particular condition.
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noun
chlamydia
kluh-MID-ee-uh/kləˈmɪdiə/
A bacterium responsible for a common sexually transmitted infection.
Etymology
The bacterial name combines “cloak” with a noun ending and is said to refer to the bacteria's ability to “cloak” infected cell nuclei. The infection takes its name from the bacteria.