migraine
Pluralmigraines
- 1A severe, disabling headache, usually on one side of the head, often with nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, and visual disturbances.
The migraine left her unable to work for the rest of the day.
Bright office lighting can trigger a migraine within minutes for some people.
Note
Half a skull is hiding in the word: Latin hemicrania, from Greek hēmi- "half" and kranion "skull", named for pain that seizes one side of the head. English first borrowed it as megrim in the late 14th century and re-spelled it after French in 1777. For a single attack the noun is countable (she gets migraines), and speakers use it deliberately to mark something worse than an ordinary headache.
- 2A neurological condition marked by recurrent attacks of severe, often one-sided headaches with nausea and sensitivity to light.
Migraine affects roughly one in seven people worldwide.
Her neurologist diagnosed migraine after a series of recurring attacks.
Note
Here the word names the disorder, not one episode, and it usually drops the article: patients with migraine, migraine is characterized by recurrent attacks. Clinicians divide it into types. Common migraine, the most frequent type, means migraine without aura. To say someone has migraine states a diagnosis. To say they have a single attack describes what is happening to them today.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with migraine, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
This is a 1777 re-spelling, following French, of Middle English "megrim," which came through Old French "migraigne" from Latin "hemicrania" ("pain in one half of the head"). That Latin word came from Ancient Greek "hēmikranía," combining "hēmi-" ("half") and "kraníon" ("skull"); it may itself calque an Egyptian word for headache, though that link could be purely incidental.