chlorosis
/klɔɹˈoʊsɪs/noun
chlorosis is a noun meaning “An anaemia, due to deficiency of iron, characterized by a yellow-green coloration of the skin” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-L-O-R-O-S-I-S, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chlorosis is chloroses.
What does chlorosis mean?
noun
- 1
An anaemia, due to deficiency of iron, characterized by a yellow-green coloration of the skin.
- 2
A yellowing of plant tissue due to loss or absence of chlorophyll.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chlorosis?
- UK /kləˈɹəʊsɪs/
- UK /klɔː-/
- US /klɔɹˈoʊsɪs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Neøn-chlorosis.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of chlorosis
- chloroses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chlorosis?
Chlorosis appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 139,999th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Chlorosis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense yellow-green colouration of the skin:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does chlorosis come from?
From international scientific vocabulary, from New Latin; by surface analysis, chlor- + -osis, where chlor- in this instance refers to pale yellow-green colorations and not to chlorine.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).