influenza [M18th] Italy saw an outbreak of a severe respiratory ailment in 1743. The English minister to Tuscany, Sir Horace Mann, wrote of Rome that ‘Everybody is ill of the Influenza, and many die’. The epidemic spread throughout Europe, and in English influenza became the general term for this type of contagious viral infection. The English shortened influenza to the more familiar flu in the mid 19th century. Italian influenza means ‘influence’ and derives from Latin fluere ‘to flow’. The Italian word also had the sense ‘an outbreak of an epidemic’, and so ‘an epidemic’. Compare malaria.