Word of the day: phthisic

I was reading some Eliot today (hence the subtitle of this blog, in fact) and came across the above gem.  According to our friends at various 'locations' around the internet (pervasive metaphor alert), 'phthisic' refers to a wasting illness of the lungs.  It's derived from the Greek phthysikos, which means consumptive.  The Greeks must have had a fairly murky sense of humour.  Then again, maybe the fashioning of a word for 'consumptive' which actually sounds like somebody wheezing their last breath - and moreover, which may have been the final straw for any unfortunate phthisic attempting to name their affliction - was nothing more than a regrettable oversight.