cryptogenicadj.
/ˌkrɪptə(ʊ)ˈdʒɛnɪk/, U.S. /ˌkrɪptəˈdʒɛnɪk/ 1. Medicine. Of unknown or undetermined origin or cause.Originally often used esp. of diseases and conditions whose causative microorganism was difficult to detect or had an unknown portal of entry into the body.
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the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > production of disease > [adjective] > unknown cause
cryptogenous1862
cryptogenic1873
cryptogenetic1882
agnogenic1940
1873 A. Flint Treat. Princ. & Pract. Med. (ed. 4) 110 The discovery, by means of the microscope, within late years, of cryptogenic formations in affections of the skin and mucous membrane, and, also, of parasitic animals.
1882 Practitioner Nov. 368 In such a case the diagnosis will lie between—(1) occult or cryptogenic pyæmia..; (2) ulcerative endocarditis..; (3) irregular typhoid: (4) syphilis.
1908 Practitioner Feb. 249 Cryptogenic pernicious anaemia... So-called ‘cryptogenic’ sepsis, or pyaemia.
1979 Jrnl. Amer. Med. Assoc. 23 Mar. 1285/1 Screening for alpha-1-antitrypsin globules in periodic acid-Schiff stained liver tissue sections should be considered in certain cases of cryptogenic liver disease in adults.
2001 H. Holmes Secret Life Dust ix. 151 A trickle of evidence links metal dusts to a quick-killing lung disease called ‘cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis’ and to mouth cancer.
2.
a. Palaeontology. Designating a taxon whose evolutionary affinity to earlier forms is unclear because intermediate fossil evidence is lacking.
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1955 Jrnl. Paleontol. 29 478 Cryptogenic species and genera in paleontology are discussed and interpreted as a natural result of paleogeographical speciation and of the spacial [sic] restriction of the areas of evolutionary development of all fossil lineages.
1962 S. J. Gould Ecol. of Gryphaea (1980) 478 Most invertebrate palaeontologists..find ‘cryptogenic’ genera and species far more commonly than they detect gradual trends or lineages.
2006 Geobios 39 121/2 Two strongly similar taxa Hemigarantia and Benatinites, separated by a large stratigraphic interval, have previously been considered as cryptogenic.
b. Ecology. Of a species: that is not known certainly to be either native or introduced in a particular locality; of indeterminate geographic origin.The term does not occur in the abstract of Carlton's talk published by the Western Society of Naturalists (63rd Ann. Meeting, California State Univeristy, Long Beach), 27-30 December 1982 (see quot. 1988).
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1988 Jrnl. Crustacean Biol. 8 378/2 Carlton (1982) proposed the term ‘cryptogenic’ for species of uncertain origins. A majority of amphipod species in the polyhaline areas of northeastern Pacific bays and estuaries have broad or ‘cosmopolitan’or ‘tropicopolitan’ distributions and thus are cryptogenic.
1996 Ecology Sept. 1653/1 I here define cryptogenic species..as a species that is not demonstrably native or introduced.
2009 G. Rolov & J. A. Crooks Biol. Invasions in Marine Ecosyst. xxv. 428 This chapter provides an overview of the non-native and cryptogenic marine species in Australian waters.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1873