Pylimitics

Anything sufficiently complex can suffer a systemic breakdown. Addressing a systemic breakdown usually requires a systematic approach. “Systemic” and “systematic” are an interesting pair; they’re closely related and obviously both come from the same etymological roots, but (possibly because neither one is used all that often) you’ll sometimes see one used where the other was intended. 

“Systemic” refers to anything associated with a complex system. It was originally used in a medical sense where the “system” was a living body, but more recently tends to be applied to any system, from a government to a company to a piece of electronics.

“Systematic” refers to methodology — carefully following a plan or program, no matter the purpose, is a “systematic approach”. One clue to whether to use “systemic” or “systematic” is to look for the word “approach”, by the way — it’s not always present, but it’s very common, and if you see it, “systematic” is probably the right word to use. 

“System” entered English around the 1600s. It comes from the Greek word “systema”, meaning “a whole compounded from several parts”. Latin contains the same word, probably borrowed from Greek. If you trace it back further, it probably came from a combination of “histanai” (to cause to stand) and “-ma”, a suffix indicating the result of an action. That comes from a proto-Indo-European root “sta”, which meant “to stand”, and is also the origin of “stet” which is to this day the indicator editors use to mean “keep this word or phrase just the way it is.”

There, you see, you can figure out word origins without much fuss; language is systemic and all you need is a systematic approach!