The sound of a sneeze has the onomatopoeic atishoo to describe it. This works well, and is further authenticated by the word’s similarity to ‘tissue’, a must-have for sneezers.

One theory links the origins of ‘atishoo’ to the Black Death.

The nursery rhyme, Ring a Ring o’Roses, is thought, by some, to have developed as a sort of folk memory of the Black Death, a bubonic plague that first ravaged England in 1348.

Approximately one eighth of the English population perished as a result of the epidemic, the symptoms of which were skin discoloration, coughing and sneezing. Outbreaks of bubonic plague continued through the ages until the Great Plague of 1665, when nearly a quarter of the population of London perished.

The famous line from the rhyme, “Atishoo! Atishoo!; we all fall down,” is purported to be a reference to the imminence of death once a person had developed the much-feared symptoms.

The word atishoo, may at one time have instilled fear and widespread panic among the masses. Thankfully the implications of the word are far less dire now, but its use is just as common these days as it was several hundred years ago.

This theory is a bit cart-and-horse. Was the song about the plague, or did it just fit neatly into later interpretations? We don’t know, but it is a great story and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.