Sternutation. It jumped out at me from a dictionary while I was looking for the etymology of "staunch." (I know, I'm a dork.) Do you know what it means?

Definition after the jump.

"To sneeze... the act, fact, or noise of sneezing."

It comes from the Greek ptarnysthai, "to sneeze." That Greek version seems like a complicated, multisyllabic word for something so common.

I thought it might be related to "sternum," which also comes to English via Greek, but it doesn't look like that's the case. "Sternum" comes from sternon, which Homer apparently only used when talking about male chests, which comes from the Proto Indo European fragment stre-, "to stretch, extend."

Anyway: sternutation! (Gesundheit!)