Also 7 cacexy, -ie, cachexe, -ie, cakexy; and in mod.Lat. form cache·xia, (8 cacexia). [ad. mod.L. cachexia or F. cachexie (16th c. in Paré), ad. Gr. καχεξία, f. κακ-ός bad + -ἐξια = ἔξις habit or state, f. ἔχ-ειν to have, have oneself, be in condition. Walker accents (kæ·keksi) which is according to Eng. analogies; but mod. Dicts. have mostly (kăke·ksi).]
‘A depraved condition of the body, in which nutrition is everywhere defective.’ Syd. Soc. Lex.
1541. R. Copland, Galyen’s Terap., 2 D iij. The euyll habytude of the body (whiche the Grekes call Cachexie).
1555. Eden, Decades W. Ind. (Arb.), 58. The dysease which the phisicians caule Cachexia.
1651. Wittie, trans. Primrose’s Pop. Err., IV. xii. 262. Who can in a Cachexie draw all the vitious humours out of the body at once.
1775. Sir E. Barry, Observ. Wines, 417. Liable to … cachexies … &c.
1843. Bethune, Scott. Peasant’s Fire-side, 65. Spirits … are not, and cannot be, affected with fevers and … cachexy.
b. A depraved habit of mind or feeling.
1652. L. S., People’s Lib., xvi. 40. The Israelites desiring a King … out of a Cacexie and evill frame of spirit.
1657. Reeve, God’s Plea, Ep. Ded. 5. I see … a cakexy of evill life amongst you.
1843. F. E. Paget, Warden of Berkingholt, 161. He would think that a Cachexy of Chattering had become epidemic among the Clergy of the nineteenth century.
1868. Symonds, in Fortn. Rev., IV. Dec., 602. Both poets [Clough and De Musset] describe the maladie du siècle—the nondescript cachexy, in which aspiration mingles with disenchantment, satire and scepticism with a childlike desire for the tranquillity of reverence and belief.
c. Said of a body politic.
1654. H. L’Estrange, Chas. I. (1655), 187. Her high repletion brought her [the City] into a Cachexy, an ill habit of body, this set her on longing and lusting after strange gods.
1883. Macm. Mag., Nov., 33/1. Ireland … lies fretful and wrathful under a grim social cachexy of distressful centuries.
