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The Director’s request:

Could you give me the background on the word “pandemic” please?

The Denotation of :
<pandemic>

And my response:

<pandemic> and <epidemic> are part of the same family. They both share the Greek root demos meaning ‘people’.

<pandemic> came into English in the 17th Century from the Late Latin word pandemus which in turn came from the Greek: pandēmos.  It is a compound word in which pan– meaning ‘all, every’ and demos ‘people’ give us the literal denotation of ‘all or every people’.

My abridged version of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon states it this way:

παν-δημος   ‘of all the people’ thus ‘common, general, public, accessible to all’.

This has led us to the modern meaning of something that affects many people over a wide geographical area.

<epidemic> in contrast, uses the Greek prefix— έπι—epi-  meaning ‘in the midst’ which we find in other words such as <epicentre>.  An epidemic, then, occurs ‘in the midst of the people’, ‘among the people’, ‘dwelling at home with the people’, hence it usually refers to something within a confined geographical area.  Compare this to the word <endemic> with a prefix en- ‘in, into, inside’ and demos ‘the people’ suggesting something that affects a native or indigenous group of people. 

Greek Elements:

 

παν  = pan   “all, every”

δημος  =  dem(os)   “belonging to the people”

έπι  =  epi “in the midst”

κεντρον  =  kentr(on) “point, prick, spike, sting” → L. centr(um) → centre “mid-point”

κράτος  =  krat(os) → crat/cracy “to be strong and mighty, to rule, hold sway”

γραφω  =  graph(os) → graph “representation by means of lines, drawing, painting”

You can read up more about Greek elements in English in
Kit 3, Theme B
and
Kit 4, Theme H
of the Real Spelling Toolbox.

Word Sums :

pan + dem + ic → pandemic

epi + dem + ic → epidemic

en + dem + ic → endemic

dem + o + → democracy

un + dem + o + crat + ic
→ undemocratic

epi + dem + i + o + log +ist
→ epidemiologist

The word <democracy> also comes from this same Greek root demos. It is a compound word made up of two Greek roots: demos ‘people’  and kratos ‘rule, power’ hence ‘the rule or power of the people’. Another word in the family implying to ‘represent the people in writing’  is <demography>.