Medical terminology

Medical terminology is language used to precisely describe the human body including its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon in. It is to be used in the field of medicine.

Notable aspects of medical terminology include the use of Latin terms and regular morphology, with the same suffixes and prefixes use quite consistently for a particular meaning. This regular morphology means that once reasonable number of morphemes are learned it becomes easy to understand very precise terms build up from these morphemes. A lot of medical language is anatomical terminology, concerning itself with the names of various parts of the body.

In forming or understanding a word root, one needs a basic comprehension of the terms and the source language. The study of the origin of words is called etymology. For example, if a word was to be formed to indicate a condition of kidneys, there are two primary roots – one from Greek (νεφρός nephr(os)) and one from Latin (ren(es)). Renal failure would be a condition of kidneys, and nephritis is also a condition, or inflammation, of the kidneys. The suffix -itis means inflammation, and the entire word conveys the meaning inflammation of the kidney. To continue using these terms, other combinations will be presented for the purpose of examples: The term 'supra-renal is a combination of the prefix supra- (meaning "above"), and the word root for kidney, and the entire word means "situated above the kidneys". The word "nephrologist" combines the root word for kidney to the suffix -ologist with the resultant meaning of "one who studies the kidneys".

In medical terminology, the word root is not usually capable of standing alone as a complete word within a sentence. This is different from most word roots in modern standard English. The medical word root is taken from a different source language, so it will remain meaningless as a stand-alone term in an English sentence. A suffix or prefix must be added to make a usable medical term. For example the term for "concerning the heart" is "cardiacus", from the Greek kardía. If a person is suffering from a heart related illness, the statement, "The patient suffered a kardía event," would not make sense. However, with the addition of a suffix -ac, the statement would be modified to read, "The patient suffered a cardiac event" which is an acceptable use of medical terminology. The process is different in standard English because the word roots are capable of standing alone in a sentence. For example, the word eye is a word root in English that can be used without modification in a sentence.

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