Standing position

Anatomical terminology is a form of scientific terminology used by anatomists, zoologists, and health professionals such as doctors.

Anatomical terminology uses many unique terms, suffixes, and prefixes deriving from Ancient Greek and Latin. These terms can be confusing to those unfamiliar with them, but can be more precise reducing ambiguity and errors. Also, since these anatomical terms are not used in everyday conversation, their meanings are less likely to change, and less likely to be misinterpreted.

To illustrate how inexact day-to-day language can be: a scar "above the wrist" could be located on the forearm two or three inches away from the hand or at the base of the hand; and could be on the palm-side or back-side of the arm. By using precise anatomical terminology such ambiguity is eliminated.

An international standard for anatomical terminology, Terminologia Anatomica has been created.

Anatomical terminology has quite regular morphology, the same prefixes and suffixes are used to add meanings to different roots. The root of a term often refers to an organ, tissue, or condition. For example, in the disorder hypertension, the prefix "hyper-" means "high" or "over," and the root word "tension" refers to pressure, so the word "hypertension" refers to abnormally high blood pressure. The roots, prefixes and suffixes are often derived from Greek or Latin, and often quite dissimilar from their English-language variants.

Latin names of structures such as musculus biceps brachii can be split up and refer to, musculus for muscle, biceps for "two-headed", brachii as in the brachial region of the arm. The first word tells us what we are speaking about, the second describes it, and the third points to location.

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