Atrophy & Hypertrophy

Atrophy (pronounced a-truh-fee)

(1) In pathology, a wasting away of the body or of an organ or part, or a failure to grow to normal size as the result of disease, defective nutrition, nerve damage or hormonal changes.

(2) Degeneration, decline, or decrease, as from disuse.

1590–1600: From the earlier Middle French atrophie and Late Latin atrophia from the Ancient Greek ἀτροφία (atrophía) (a wasting away), (derived from trephein (to feed)) from ἄτροφος (átrophos) (ill-fed, un-nourished), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + τροφή (trophḗ) (nourishment) from τρέφω (tréphō) (I fatten).  Atrophic is the most familiar adjectival form.  The a- prefix, a proclitic form of preposition, is from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (not, without) and is used to form taxonomic names indicating a lack of some feature that might be expected.  In Middle English a- (up, out, away) was from the Old English ā- (originally ar- & or-) from the Proto-Germanic uz- (out-), from the primitive Indo-European uds- (up, out); it was cognate with the Old Saxon ā- and the German er-.  The suffix –ia is from Classical Latin from the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) and was used to form abstract nouns of feminine gender.  It creates names of countries, diseases, flowers, and (rarely) collections of things such as militaria & deletia).

Hypertrophy (pronounced hahy-pur-truh-fee)

(1) In physiology, the abnormal (but usually non-tumorous) enlargement of an organ or a tissue as a result of an increase in the size rather than the number of constituent cells.

(2) By analogy, excessive growth or accumulation of any kind.

1825–1835: A compound word hyper- + -trophy.  Hyper is from the French hypertrophie, from the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (over, excessive), from the primitive Indo-European upér (over, above) (from which English gained over), from upo (under, below) (source of the English up). It was cognate with the Latin super- and is a common prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, where it meant “over,” usually implying excess or exaggeration (eg hyperbole); on this model used, especially as opposed to hypo-, in the formation of compound words.

Hypertrophied catfish now found in the cooling ponds of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor which in 1986 suffered a meltdown and subsequent explosion.  Their huge size is not a radiation-induced mutation but a result of the absence of a predator since humans were removed from their environment.