2

A webpage states:

what do you think <rh> and <rrh> could possibly mean all by themselves? Hmm. What do diarrhea, hemorrhage and rhythm all have in common? Give up? They all have something to do with flow. ...

is hemo + rrh + age –> hemorrhage.

Is this correct?

EtymOnline states instead that hemorrhage is

from haima "blood" (see -emia) + rhagē "a breaking, gap, cleft," from rhēgnynai "to break, burst," from PIE *uhreg- "break."

Some websites state that "rrhoea" means "flow", e.g. Wiktionary:

From Ancient Greek ῥοία (rhoía, “flow, flux”).

So does "rh" or "rrh" mean "flow" or anything?

Improve this question
4
  • 4
    If you look up both diarrhea and hemorrhage in Wiktionary, you can see that there are two distinct etymologies, with two different roots for the suffix. The same is true looking up both words in Etymonline.
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Commented Jan 5, 2023 at 6:48
  • 3
    For context, "rh" is the regular spelling used (in English) instead of "r" at the start of Greek roots, and this is regularly changed to "rrh" in the spelling of compounds or prefixed words—I wrote an answer about that here: Why are there two Rs in "arrhythmic"? This is due to phonetic changes involving the "r" sound in Greek, and does not imply that all words containing "rh" or "rrh" have a single common origin.
    – herisson
    Commented Jan 5, 2023 at 18:15
  • 1
    Before anyone else downvotes, beware that phonosemantics is a thing, and folks like J. Lawler have studied it, and it is a useful tool. See english.stackexchange.com/questions/96625/hump-rump-lump-bump, for example. You will never say "Trump" the same way again, however you may have said it before!
    – Conrado
    Commented Jan 6, 2023 at 3:11
  • 1
    There's no pronunciation difference in English between rrh and rh and r. They're just spelling variants like theatre and theater. Consequently, if they can't be heard, they can't have any effect on phonosemantics.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jun 4, 2023 at 20:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

According to NOAD, two of those words are related:

  • Diarrhea: late Middle English: via late Latin from Greek diarrhoia, from diarrhein 'flow through', from dia 'through' + rhein 'to flow'.

  • Rhythm: mid 16th century (also originally in the sense 'rhyme'): from French rhythme, or via Latin from Greek rhuthmos (related to rhein 'to flow').

NOAD agrees with Wiktionary for the etymology of hemorrhage. The presence of (r)rh here is just a relic of how the Greek was transliterated. Similarly, rhinoceros is yet another unrelated Greek-derived word spelled with rh.

It doesn't make much sense to me to say that "rh" means something in these words. It's not productive in English (unlike -orrhea which is used in new words like logorrhea) and it has no apparent meaning in English. In Ancient Greek, ῥέω did mean flow, which is how we eventually got the words rhythm and diarrhea (and even rheumatism, though it is no longer thought to be caused by watery tumors flowing).

Going back a level to the PIE root *srew-, maelstrom and stream are also related, though since they didn't go through Greek they did not lose the initial S.

Improve this answer
-2

In general, the suffix -rrhea comes from Greek ῥοία ("flow"). "Rhythm" and "hemmorhage" do not, but there are a number of related words:

  • Mennorrhea is the flow of blood during menstruation; amennorhea is the absence of such discharge; dysmenorrhea is pain during menstruation.
  • Logorrhea is the flow of too many words, i.e. excessive talkativeness or verbosity.
  • Gonorrhea is an STD; the first part of the name is from from γόνος (“sperm, seed, offspring”).
Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.