Wednesday, January 6, 2010

I wonder if geese actually get goose bumps. If not, where does the term ''goose bumps'' come from?
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1 comment:

  1. Karen WinfieldJanuary 7, 2010 at 9:53 AM

    From Medicinenet.com:

    The word "gooseflesh" (written as one word or as two) is older than "goose bumps." Gooseflesh dates back to about 1810, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which defines it as "a rough pimply condition of the skin, produced by cold, fear, etc."

    A fancier term for this familiar phenomenon is "horripilation." Horripilation was compounded from the Latin "horrere", to stand on end + "pilus", hair = hair standing on end.

    Medicine does not use a horrible term such as "horripilation" and rarely resorts to the commonplace words, goose bumps or gooseflesh. Medicine has a special term, "cutis anserina", that sounds like a scary dermatologic diagnosis. But it goes back to the goose again, since "cutis", skin + "anser", goose = goose skin.

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