An enlargement of the thyroid gland in the neck, usually caused by a lack of iodine in the diet, which causes the neck to swell visibly.
From French goître, from Latin guttur meaning 'throat,' with possible Celtic influences. The term originally simply meant a throat swelling but came to be specifically applied to thyroid enlargement once the condition was better understood.
Goiter was one of the first diseases that governments tackled with a public health solution—iodized salt! In the early 1900s, Swiss and American health officials realized simply adding iodine to table salt could prevent this painful condition entirely, saving millions of people from thyroid disease. It's one of modern medicine's quietest victories.
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