Meaning

noun acute contagious infection caused by the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae; marked by the formation of a false membrane in the throat and other air passages causing difficulty in breathing

originFrom French diphtérie (later for a while also spelled diphthérie) in 1857, which was coined in 1855 with the suffix -ie to replace -ite in the previous term diphtérite for the disease because it affects more than one part of the body. The previous term (later for a while also spelled diphthérite) was coined in 1817 by Pierre Bretonneau using Ancient Greek διφθέρα (diphthéra, “prepared hide,…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0