A person with leprosy, a serious infectious skin disease; historically used to describe someone isolated from society.
From Greek 'lepra' (leprosy), from 'lepis' meaning 'scaly,' referring to the scaly skin symptoms of the disease. The Latin 'leprosus' became 'leper' in Middle English.
Leprosy is caused by bacteria and is actually curable with antibiotics today, but medieval people who didn't understand disease thought it was incurable and banished lepers to colonies—creating stigma that lasted centuries even after medicine caught up.
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