Talk:Phenoptosis

Etymology of Phenoptosis

I find the explanation in the first sentence of the article (ptosis - programmed death) rather hard to believe, especially given that "Programmed death" is a (relatively) sophisticated concept.

Also, any etymological explanation must surely include the language the original words or roots belong to. In the absence of this information, I suggest that this etymology be removed from the article.

194.74.6.54 (talk) 10:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)Srikanth Madani

I just edited to provide this information and ÐℬigXЯaɣ removed it. Ptosis is a noun that originally just means "falling" as can be seen in the medical condition ptosis (eyelid) where the eyelid "falls" (oddly enough, it's also the word the Greeks used to describe grammatical cases, and "case" itself comes from the Latin verb cado, cadere, cecidi, casurus with the same meaning -- cf. English "cadaver" which means something like "one who has fallen"). Its sense in programmed cell death is derived from the compound word apoptosis (lit. "falling away") which was used by Galen to describe medical phenomena such as a scab dropping off a healing wound: this is logical when one considers that programmed cell death is what causes the toes to divide in fetal animals as the connecting tissue sort of "falls away".

There's your etymology. 207.188.232.179 (talk) 15:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)