Today’s morning name, the nettlesome noun urticaria: the medical name for an allergic rash commonly known as hives. This time, I knew exactly why my morning name was in my head, and it had nothing to do with the Philip Glass music breaking in waves over me as I woke: it came right out of an re-run episode of the tv show Rizzoli & Isles that I had seen the day before.
Urticaria. From NOAD:
noun urticaria: Medicine a rash of round, red welts on the skin that itch intensely, sometimes with dangerous swelling, caused by an allergic reaction, typically to specific foods. Also called nettlerash or hives. ORIGIN late 18th century: modern Latin, from Latin urtica ‘nettle’, from urere ‘to burn’.
In the Rizzoli & Isles episode, Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander) breaks out in hives because she has told a lie, and that’s her body’s response to the psychological distress that afflicts her when she lies.
The R & I episode. Rizzoli & Isles S3 E5 “Throwing Down the Gauntlet” (first aired 7/3/12). Maura meets Dr. Hope Martin (Sharon Lawrence), who is in fact Maura’s biological mother (though Hope doesn’t know this); Maura breaks out in a rash that Hope identifies as urticaria.
Not a word I hear very often, so it struck me at the time. And, apparently, stuck with me through the night.
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