Word of the day: rachitic

The word of the day is rachitic:

Etymology:  < rachitis n. + -ic suffix, perhaps after post-classical Latin rachiticus (1731 or earlier), French rachitique (1741). 

1. Med.a. Of or relating to rickets. 

b. Affected with rickets; = rickety adj. 1b. 

2. fig. Feeble; liable to collapse. (OED)

"Another attributed the remains to a man with rickets: the man had been in so much pain from his disease that he'd kept his forehead perpetually tensed–hence the protruding brow ridge.  (What a man with rickets and in constant pain was doing climbing into a  cave was never really explained.)


"Over the next decades, bones resembling those from the Neander Valley–thicker than those of modern humans, with strangely shaped skulls–were discovered at several more sites, including two in Belgium and one in France.  Meanwhile, a skull that had been unearthed years earlier in Gibraltar was shown to look much like the one from Germany.  Clearly, all these remains could not be explained by stories of disoriented Cossacks or rachitic spelunkers."


 - Elizabeth Kolbert, "Sleeping with the enemy: What happened between the Neanderthals and us?", 15 & 22 August 2011 The New Yorker

At which point I reveal that I did not know that "rickety" gets its roots from "rickets".