Most style guides recommend against putting an apostrophe in front of “flu”, even though it’s a shortened word. Now, the University of Oxford’s guide says, the contraction is accepted “in its own right”.
After all, the word has been clipped from its original form (influenza) since the mid-1900s, decades after its origin. It’s gone by “the flu” since at least 1839 (spelled “the Flue” at first), a century or so after it entered the English lexicon, says Merriam-Webster.
But its first definition had less to do with sniffles and tissues than you might think.
According to an etymology of the word published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, “influenza” originally had to do with the stars.
What did “influenza” originally mean?
It comes from the Latin in...
English (US)