What does "polycythemia" mean?

A rare disorder in which the bone marrow produces an abnormally large amount of blood cells, often red blood cells.

What is a synonym for "polycythemia"?

Common synonyms include: anemia, blood, erythrocythemia, erythrocytosis, hemophilia, leukemia.

Pronounced //ˌpɒlɪsaɪˈθiːmɪə//.

//ˌpɒlɪsaɪˈθiːmɪə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A rare disorder in which the bone marrow produces an abnormally large amount of blood cells, often red blood cells. countable, uncountable
2
a disorder characterized by an abnormal increase in the number of red blood cells in the blood wordnet

From poly- + -cyte + -emia, with /θ/ for euphony; akin to poly- + -cyte + hem- + -ia; morphologically parallel with erythrocythemia.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.