Meaning

noun fruiting body of some rust fungi bearing chains of aeciospores

originFrom New Latin aecium, from Ancient Greek αἰκίᾱ (aikíā, “injury, insult”). However Merriam-Webster relates that aecium is a back-formation from aecidium and is not related to the Greek αἰκίᾱ (aikíā). The word aecium was "introduced as a substitute for aecidium by the Purdue University plant pathologist J. C. Arthur (1850–1942) in an effort to reform terminology for rust fungi; see Terminology of…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0