- 1小兒麻痺（台灣都這樣叫；中國大陸官方多用「脊髓灰質炎」）
Polio is a serious disease caused by a virus. It attacks the nerves in the spine — the long bundle of nerves down your back — and can leave a person unable to move an arm, a leg, or even the muscles used for breathing. Some people get only a mild fever and get well; some cannot move those muscles for the rest of their lives; in the worst cases, people die.
Though actually, for many students today this is a word from history class and from . In the middle of the last century it terrified parents. Then a vaccine arrived, and in many places, including Taiwan, the disease almost disappeared. Doctors still watch it, because the virus has not been wiped off the earth, and because some people who had polio as children later grow weaker again as they get older.
The full doctor’s name is poliomyelitis. “Polio” is the short everyday name. Older English also said “infantile paralysis,” which matches the Chinese 小兒麻痺 — though actually adults can get it too; it was never only a children’s disease. Do not mix it up with polo, the sport played on horses.
From the word’s history
Shortened from poliomyelitis.
poliomyelitis（小兒麻痺症）的前半截縮寫。
組成Short for poliomyelitis: polio is the first chunk of that long name. In the long name, polio- comes from a Greek word for “grey” (the grey part of the spinal cord), and the rest means swelling of the cord. Daily life only needs “polio.”
同家族的字
- poliomyelitisthe full medical name; polio is the short form
- poliovirusthe virus that causes the disease
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Polioname
- 1
A surname from Spanish.
polionoun/ˈpəʊljəʊ/
- 1
informalA person who has poliomyelitis.
- They don't need social service workers running back and forth every month or two to see if the polios are playing stickball in the street because they never will.
- The “polios” (as they called themselves) in Warm Springs didn't deny the seriousness of their health issues or the impairments to their physiology. But their most critical struggle, they claimed, involved healing sorely wounded spirits.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- poliomyelitis
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。