Influenza, Flu
Influenza has been passed through so many languages, and had so many different meanings along the way, it’s really a lot like a communicable disease itself.
It began as bhel, meaning “blow up, swell” in Proto Indo European (bhel is also the ancestor of phallus, foliage, bowl, bulk, fool, boulder, bull, balloon, and even Balder), which in later Proto Indo European gave rise to bhleug, “to overflow” (ancestor of bloat, fluctuate, flux, fluent, affluent, superfluous, etc.). In Latin bhleug became fluere, “to flow”, and derived from this was influere, “flow in, influx”. In Medieval Latin (which was rarely a spoken language, but used for scholarship and theology throughout Europe), related influentia was used to describe the influx of mystic power from the stars to humanity, i.e. astrological influences. A thousand years later, influentia was borrowed into Italian — Latin’s most direct child — as influenza, still referring to the influence of power from the stars to human affairs. But the most visible and terrible of such influenze was pestilence, and since 1500 in Italy influenza has referred to disease. In 1743, there was a terrible outbreak of influenza throughout Europe, and English borrowed influenza from Italian to describe the epidemic. In the 1830’s the shortening flu appeared; and since the mid 19th century, influenza/flu has also been used to describe severe colds.
It’s interesting that flu is the shortened form of influenza – it’s not the primary stressed syllable, as is the usual case with abbreviations, but it’s an excellent choice phonosemantically. The communicability of the flu is indicated by flu’s similarity to fly, and its effusive effect on the sufferer is reflected in its similarity to flow. In both cases an expansive, fluid energy is set free (”fl”); in the case of flu, the energy (long “u”) is speedy and flowing, too.
