'arteriostenosis' originates from Neo-Latin and Ancient Greek, specifically from Greek 'arteria' (Ἀρτηρία) meaning 'artery' and Greek 'stenosis' (στένωσις), where the element 'steno-' meant 'narrow' and the suffix '-osis' indicated a condition.

'arteriostenosis' was formed in modern medical Latin/Neo-Latin by combining the Greek-derived prefix 'arterio-' (from Greek/Latin 'arteria', which became English 'artery') with 'stenosis'; it entered English medical usage as a compound technical term in the 19th–20th centuries.

Initially it literally meant 'narrowing of an artery'; over time the term has retained that specific medical meaning referring to pathological narrowing that impairs arterial blood flow.