Yesterday, I spent most of the morning at the eye hospital. The optic nerve in one of my eyes was a bit unusual so they wanted to investigate it. This involved drugging both my eyes so the pupils couldn't contract and then shining bright lights into them. I confessed everything. In the end, the doctor declared that the anomaly in my eye was idiopathic. Although I didn't know the word — and it's not a very friendly word — the doctor's tone of voice told me that it was a good thing. It meant that there would be no more light torture in the near future and no scary eye operation. On the other hand, it also meant I would have to live with my less-than-perfect vision.

I had to find out about this new word. It wasn't just my usual fascination with words. I wanted to know what was up with my eye! The word looks like a composite of 'idiot' and 'pathetic', which doesn't seem promising at all. But that's just what it does mean. At least, 'idiopathic' shares the same Greek roots as 'idiot' and 'pathetic'.

idios: personal, private, individual

pathos: suffering, emotion, something to be endured

Dictionaries define idiopathic as having an unkown cause. The sense is indeed of something that has to be endured on your own (because doctors don't know what causes it or what to do about it).

I have long been searching for a suitable word to mean the opposite of 'expert'. My current favourite is still 'impert' (see my blog entry on the subject). However, my investigation of idiopathy has revealed that the real opposite of 'expert' is 'idiot'. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, this is just how the Greek idiotes and Latin idiota were used.