- Jeffrey K Aronson
Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK
- Twitter @JKAronson
Crowns
The word “crown” comes from the Latin word corona, which means just that, via a French intermediate, corone or couronne. The Latin word comes in turn from its IndoEuropean root KER, which meant to turn or bend.
Many English words beginning cr-, cer-, cir-, cor-, and kur- come from suffixed forms of the root, generally via Greek or Latin, and generally referring to objects that are in some way curved.
Here are the Latin derivatives:
● crinis, a lock of hair, sometimes crinkly, gives us crinoline, a stiff material made from a mixture of horsehair and cotton or linen thread;
● crispus, curly, and by extension elegant, gives us crêpe, crisp, and crispate; the circumflex in crêpe indicates a missing letter s, as, for example, in bête (beast), château (castle), côte (coast), forêt (forest), hôpital (hospital), hôtel (hostel), île (isle), and pâté (paste);
● crista meant a crest, and the word has come straight into English with that meaning; look at one of Bridget Riley’s curve paintings, Crest, for an excellent example;
● curvus, bent or curved, gives us curb, curvature, curve, and curvet, an elegant manoeuvre in which a horse rears and jumps forward on its hind legs without its forelegs touching the ground.
And here are the Greek derivatives:
● κίρκος, or the metathetical form κρίκος, a ring or circle, via Latin circus, gives us cerclage, circa, circadian, circinate, circle, the prefix circum-, circus, cirque, the cricoid cartilage, recherché, and search;
● κυρτός, bulging or convex, gives us kurtosis, which in Greek, κυρτωσις, was originally applied to bulging blood vessels.
Coronary words
The Greek word κορωνός, curved or crooked, via Latin corona, gives us a host of words to do with crowns, in one way or another, of which the following are medical examples.
Corona itself has been used to describe parts of the body that have been likened to a crown. The corona glandis is the basal rim of the glans penis. The corona radiata refers either to a group of fibres in the brain that spread radially from the internal capsule to the cerebral cortex or to a layer of follicular cells that develop around an ovum shortly before ovulation.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has a single reference to the term “corona veneris,” taken from the New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon (Volume II, 1882), in which it is defined as “Term for syphilitic blotches on the forehead, which often extend around it like a crown.” However, antedatings can be found. Here, for example, is an instance from 1843: “Syphilitic eruptions, when seated on the forehead, bear the name of ‘corona veneris,’ and papulae frequently break out in that seat, forming the weightiest of constitutional crowns.”1 An even earlier instance can be found in a scurrilous verse by the pamphleteer William Jackson, using the pseudonym Humphrey Nettle to attack Samuel Foote in 17762:
Let his whole mass with poison be condens’d
And for each pang of his, one Whore be cleans’d;
Let rank corruption, mining all within,
Consume his vitals, e’er the cause is seen;
‘Till noisome stench prevents the Faculty
Approaching near, their Caustics to apply:
And he one tormenting B–boe feel,
From the Corona veneris to the heel;
While shankers perforate his mouth and nose,
That not a simple want he may disclose:
Zinn’s vascular ring, a ring of branches of the ciliary arteries around the optic nerve, is also known as Zinn’s corona. Corona seborrhoeica is a red band along the upper border of the forehead and temples, sometimes seen in seborrheic dermatitis or pityriasis capitis.3
When the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the halo of light around the disc is called its corona, which can be recorded using a coronagraph. When June Almeida, in collaboration with David Tyrrell, used electron microscopy to identify three previously uncharacterised respiratory viruses, of which two had not been associated with human diseases, she noticed their similarity to an eclipse of the sun and called them coronaviruses.4
The coronal suture is the transverse suture of the skull at the crown of the head, which separates the frontal bones from the parietal bones. The forehead is also called the coronal region and the frontal bone the coronal bone.
Any parts of the body that encircle other parts can be described as coronary. This includes the coronary arteries and veins of the heart, and extends to associated structures such as the coronary plexus, the coronary sinus, and the coronary valve. There is a coronary ligament in the elbow and a coronary venous sinus in the brain.
Coroners
The office of coroner in England dates from the end of the 12th century, having been established by Richard I in the so-called Articles of Eyre of 1194, an eyre being a court of itinerant justices, from the Latin verb itinerare, to journey.
A coroner was originally an officer of the crown, with the title custos placitorum coronae, or guardian of the pleas of the crown, a role from which other officials, such as sheriffs and constables, were barred. The coroner’s duties included protecting the financial interests of the crown in criminal proceedings and acting as a tax gatherer.5 Coroners also detained witnesses and suspected felons and heard their confessions. And they held inquests with juries, having carried out superficial post-mortem examinations. In later centuries all of these duties, except that of holding inquests, declined, with increasing centralisation of judicial proceedings and the establishment of other officers, such as Justices of the Peace. Originally, coroners were landowners, regarded as wise, lawful men and were appointed for life. They did not need to be either medically or legally qualified.
A lexicographic puzzle
The historian Roger of Hoveden recorded the establishment of the office of coroner in his chronicles as follows: “Praeterea in quolibet comitatu eligantur tres milites et unus clericus custodes placitorum coronæ” (i.e. “Furthermore, a company of three soldiers and one cleric is to be elected in a suitable fashion as guardians of the pleas of the crown”).6 Each was called a coroner, and the term was then translated into medieval Latin as coronarius. As early as the Magna Carta (1215), however, the word was rendered instead as coronator, from which the adjective coronatorial was derived. The relevant law was referred to as the lex coronatoria. Nevertheless, the OED marks the adjective “rare” and lists only one example, from the Law Times of 7 March 1885.
Other instances can be found, however, with some antedating the dictionary’s example. Here, for instance, is an extract from the Medical Times and Gazette of 25 February 1843, a diatribe against Thomas Wakley. Wakley (1795–1862) was an English apothecary and surgeon, who was the founding editor of The Lancet in 1823, a member of parliament, and a coroner. According to the anonymous writer in the Medical Times, “It is said that your truly great men prove the genuineness of their mission by the accomplishment of some one great object. Is this distinction—which is supposed to have characterized Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander, Mahomet, Luther, Bacon, Newton—to be unpossessed by Mr Wakley? Belonging evidently to their honoured order, it is not to be doubted that a great mission is entrusted to his destiny. If it be not coronatorial destruction, what— (will any kind reader tell us) —what is it?”
And in The Lancet itself in 1829 we find a pseudonymous letter referring to “the coronatorial appointment.”7 “Coronatorial” is not in the 1806 edition of A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language by the American lexicographer Noah Webster, but it is in Webster’s New International Dictionary of 1920, marked “rare.” It is not to be found in other major dictionaries.
Many similar examples of “coronatorial” can be found throughout the 19th century, but use of the word has become increasingly uncommon since 1900. Instead, the adjectival form that is universally used today is “coronial.” For example, a PubMed search yields no hits for “coronatorial” but over 600 for “coronial,” the most recent having appeared only this week,8 and the earliest dating from 1978.9 Many earlier examples can be found in the 19th century, going back at least as far as 1814.
Even so the adjective “coronial” is not to be found as a headword in the OED, although there is an instance in a citation, under “baby farm,” dating from 1907, in a now defunct antipodean paper called New Zealand Truth: “The coronial inquiry into the death of Baby Booth at Mrs Mitchell’s baby farm was concluded on Monday.” Nor is it to be found in other major dictionaries.
Given that there are so many examples of both forms going back so far, and that the term ”coronial” is now widely used, it is time for the OED, and other dictionaries, to catch up.
References
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Humphrey Nettle [William Jackson], Sodom and Onan: A Satire Inscribed to [Samuel Foote] Esq., Alias the Devil upon Two Sticks. Printed for the Author, and sold at No. 23, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, June 22 – 1772: 26-7.
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Roger of Hoveden. Capitula placitorum coronae regis. In: Stubbs W (ed). Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene. London: Longman & Co. and Trubner & Co., Paternoster Row; Oxford: Parker & Co.; Cambridge: Macmillan & Co, 1870: III: 263-4.
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