Bruce Willis was recently said to be stepping away from his acting career due to a diagnosis of a “aphasia.” This is not good news for this wonderful actor, but it is a good time to take notice of the meaning of the diagnosis.
noun
apha· sia | \ ə-ˈfā-zh(ē-)ə \
Definition
• medical : loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words usually resulting from brain damage (as from a stroke, head injury, or infection)//Aphasia, the cruel illness resulting from a stroke, allowed Jean to understand what was said to her but prevented her from clearly replying. — Robert Giroux
Other Words
• apha sic \ ə-ˈfā-zik \ noun or adjective
First Known Use
1864, in the meaning defined above
History and Etymology
borrowed from French aphasie, from a- A- entry 2 + Greek phásis “utterance, statement” (from pha-, variant stem of phēmí, phánai “to say, speak” + -sis -SIS) + French -ie -IA entry 1 — more at BAN entry 1
NOTE: French aphasie was introduced by the physician Armand Trousseau (1801-67) in “De l’aphasie, maladie décrite récemment sous le nom impropre de l’aphémie,” Gazette des hôpitaux civils et militaires, tome 37, issue of January 12, 1864, pp. 13-14. As is evident from the title, Trousseau preferred aphasie to the term aphémie, introduced earlier by physician and anthropologist Pierre Paul Broca (1824-80). Broca replied in defense of his coinage in a letter published in the same periodical on January 23. The controversy, with translated extracts from Gazette des hôpitaux, is summarized by John Ryalls in “Where does the term ‘aphasia’ come from?,” Brain and Language, vol. 21 (1984), pp. 358-63. Though Trousseau’s arguments are linguistically not at all sound, his choice has nonetheless prevailed.
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “aphasia”