nosocomial

Definition

Of an infection or its cause: arising from the environment of, or treatment in, a hospital.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Late Latin nosocomīum (“hospital, infirmary”) + English -al (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives). Nosocomīum is borrowed from Ancient Greek νοσοκομεῖον (nosokomeîon, “hospital, infirmary”), from νοσοκομέω (nosokoméō, “to tend the sick”) + -εῖον (-eîon, suffix forming nouns denoting places); νοσοκομέω (nosokoméō) is from νόσος (nósos, “disease, illness, sickness”) (further etymology uncertain) + κομέω (koméō, “to take care of, look after, tend”) (from Proto-Indo-European *kem(H)- (“to be tired; to exert oneself”)).

Example Sentences

• "It is a febrile disease accompanied by symptoms quite peculiar to it. […] There is a peculiar conformity between it and nosocomial fever, or typhus of prisons, described by Pringle [i.e., Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet], a disease of a complicated nature, and named by Pinal adynamic & ataxic fever. We shall soon see that both may originate from analogous causes, and that a contagion not being sufficiently strong for developing the true nosocomial fever among healthy persons, may, nevertheless, produce hospital gangrene."
• "Professor Laveran furnishes this narration as a specimen of the injurious effects which nosocomial influences exert upon otherwise benign affections. The return of troops from the Italian war had the effect of producing great accumulations of troops in the military Hospitals. […] [W]e find that some [febrile diseases], as malarial diseases for example, are benefited by the very fact of residence within an Hospital, and are but little subjected to nosocomial influences."
• "Gosselin discovered that this mode of [raw cotton] dressing was not a certain prophylactic against nosocomial intoxication, because he saw a patient die of purulent infection, whose limb had been amputated in his service, and in another case an attack of erysipelas followed."