Is it "Tinitus" or something else and what does it mean?

Tinnitus is often spelled "tinitus" which is not actually correct but commonly used.  "tinnitus" is the correct version but along with tinitus there are many different spellings being used by people throughout the world.  As far as we can tell all of the other spellings are in fact missepllings rather than just different versions for different countries as often happens.  However, pronunciations do seem to change with location.  We'll come back to those points in a minute but first we'll look at the question "where does the word in the English language come from?"

The word is derived from the Latin word "tinnire" which means “to ring”.  In some locations, the condition is also known as “tinnitus aurium”.

Depending on your location, tinnitus can have different pronunciations (although misspellings seem to be pretty universal). In the US, for example, the second “i” is stressed, and it is said “tin-I-tus”. In the UK, however, the vowel is given it's short sound which is makes it sound as one syllable, “tinnitus.”  Some of the alternate spellings (though all seem to be misspellings) of the word “tinnitus” include the following:

• tinitus 
• tinnitis 
• tinitis 
• tinatus 
• tinnutis 
• tinnatus 
• tenitis 
• tinatis 
• tintinitus 
• tintinitis

We beleive the reason for these varyations is due to people having only ever heard the word and never seen it written down properly anywhere so they spell it phonetically to match the particular way they've heard it pronounced.

But at the end of the day it really doesn't matter how you spell it nothing is going to take away from the fact that it is irritating at best and quite literally sanity stretching or suicidal making at worst.

However, what we can learn from this is if medical people have spent the time to give it a proper medical Latin name then it is a serious enough condition to require tackling but that seems to be about as far as the conventional medical profession has got with it.  Most doctors you speak to will be out of ideas once they've syringed your ears.  Fear not!  There are others outside of that profession who have taken it upon them selves to research tinnitus and put together ebooks that could permanently tackle this most frustrating of conditions.

Many people have found either a reduction in their symptoms right up to complete eradication of them.  It has to be worth a try.