STIGMA, plural, stigmas, or stigmata (Greek stigma, mark, puncture, brand), a mark made with a red-hot iron; a brand impressed on slaves and others. The original Greek signifi cation of the word has received many secondary meanings. Owing to its association with the branding of slaves, stigma has come to have the signification of a mark of infamy, a slur at tached to any one on account of evil conduct. n anatomy stigma bears a meaning closer to the original signification of the word which was to puncture with a sharp pointed instrument. This sense is closely related to that of the Eng lish verb uto stick," meaning to pierce, puncture or stab (with a pen or other pointed weapon). The expression eto stick one with a stick" con veys the meaning and shows the derivation of the English word, which is related to the Eng lish to sting, and the German stechen, to prick, pierce, sting thrust and stab. These being the equivalents of stigma in the English language, the Greek word came to have, in English, a more or less popular usage, only one of its sig nifications, and that metaphorical, being derived from its association with slaves and outcasts, the official marks on whom came to be sym bolical with social and moral degradation.
But science has gone back to the original sense of the Greek word and has given us nu merous scientific terms in modern English, de rived from the Greek or from its Latin deriv ative. In anatomy and zoology stigma is used
in the sense of a mark, point or noticeable place, as for example a naevus, a birth-mark. The place on the surface of an ovary where there is a rupture of a mature Graafian follicle is termed a stigma. The word also signifies a chitinous mark on the anterior margin of the forewings of numerous insects. It is the term used to designate the interior orifice of a trachea, a spot of pigment in protozoa, one of the pores of the segmental organs; a ciliated opening connecting the cavity of the pharynx with that of the artificial canal. Any mark on the skin which bleeds periodically or even at irregular intervals is also termed a stigma. None of these uses of the term departs from the root meaning of the word, which, as we have seen, was to puncture or prick, with the substantive sense of the thing punctured or pricked.
In botany the stigma is a part of the style, or in the absence of the latter, of the surface of the ovary, which receives the pollen.
Stigma was used in Greek grammar as a signature which is still used sometimes for ust.° It also designated the number six.