allergy
Pluralallergies
- 1A disorder of the immune system that produces adverse reactions to normally harmless substances, marked by histamine release and linked to atopy, anaphylaxis, and asthma.
A severe nut allergy means she carries an epinephrine injector wherever she goes.
Seasonal allergies flare up every spring when pollen counts rise.
Note
A twentieth-century coinage: the Austrian pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet made German Allergie in 1906 from Greek allos, "other," and ergon, "work," patterned on Energie. That makes it literally "other work." In everyday and much clinical use the word stretches to any hypersensitivity to a substance, as in a nut allergy or seasonal allergies. Immunologists who want precision keep it for the IgE-mediated type.
- 2A feeling of strong dislike or aversion, as toward a person or an activity.
My manager has a real allergy to long meetings and ends them fast.
Their allergy to criticism makes every feedback session tense.
Similaraversion, dislike, antipathy, distaste
Note
The medical word turned on tastes: someone with an allergy to reality TV recoils from it the way a body recoils from pollen. Like the medical sense, it takes to before its object. It stays informal and a little playful. In formal writing, antipathy or aversion says the same thing without the joke.
- 3A class I hypersensitivity in the modern classification, the type mediated by immunoglobulin E antibodies.
An immediate IgE-mediated allergy can escalate to anaphylaxis within minutes of exposure.
Skin-prick testing helps confirm a class I allergy before doctors prescribe avoidance measures.
Note
The specialist's narrow usage picks out one class of hypersensitivity and sets the other classes aside. In clinical or research writing, the strict sense often travels with its marker, as in an IgE-mediated allergy. Outside that setting, readers will usually take the word in the broad everyday meaning, so a writer who means the narrow one does well to say "IgE-mediated" outright.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from German Allergie, coined by Austrian pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet in 1906 from Ancient Greek állos ("other") plus érgon ("work, activity"), formed on the model of Energie.