comedo

Jan. 23rd, 2015 07:59 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (words are sexy)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
comedo (KOM-i-doh) - n., (med.) a clogged hair follicle or pore.


Can be closed over with skin, in which case it's a whitehead, or open, in which case oils from the skin darken the plug to be a blackhead. Plural is formally comedones, but comedos is also seen. Adapted in the 1860s from Medical Latin, from Latin comedō, glutton, from the supposed resemblance of the wormlike shape of a squeezed blackhead to a worm eating the flesh (lovely image, innit?), from comedere, to eat up, from com-, used as an intensifying prefix + edere, to eat.

And that's it for six-letter words -- back next week with the usual mix.

---L.

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