cataract [LME] Latin cataracta (from Greek kataraktes, ‘rushing down’) meant both ‘waterfall or floodgate’ and ‘portcullis’. The first meaning led to the ‘large waterfall’ sense of the English word cataract, and the second is probably behind the medical sense describing the clouding of the lens of the eye. A person’s vision is blocked by this condition as if a portcullis had been lowered over the eye. Other words in English containing kata ‘down’ include cataclysm [E17th] from kluzein ‘to wash’; catapult [L16th] from pallein ‘hurl’; and catastrophe [M16th] from strophē ‘turning’.