Language/Modern-greek-1453/Culture/Greek-in-Medical-Vocabulary

Borrowings from Greek in medical vocabulary

Ancient Greek society valued and encouraged literary pursuits as much as mathematical and scientific studies. So, it should come as no surprise that Greek doctors particularly excelled at diagnostics—the field that, no doubt, benefits from one’s imaginative depth and penchant for figurative thinking.

For example, the Greek term diabetes mellitus literally means “flowing through/sweet as honey,” which, most initially referred to the sweet odor of the urine of a person with diabetes. The terminology for medical conditions that was developed by Greek doctors continues to be the basis of our classifications of diseases.

Romans happily inherited Greeks’ treasure-trove of medical knowledge, which they carefully preserved through translation into Latin and propagated among their numerous vassals. A huge medical encyclopedia called De Medicina (About Medicine), written by the Roman nobleman Cornelius Celsus, recorded all that was then known about Greek and Roman medicine.

Apart from Greek and Latin, Arabic became another language of medical use, owing to the extraordinary expansion of the Arab empire in the 7th century. Arab physicians, who eagerly embraced the medical knowledge of Greeks, in turn, ensured its preservation and further contributed to its richness.

The greatest Arab physician was Ibn Sînâ, or Avicenna (10th–11th century), as he was called in Latin. His most famous work is The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia that became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as until the 17th century.

The Arabic words, which had entered English through Latin and then French, include alcohol, alchemy, alkali, and nitrate. In fact, French was an invaluable intermediary between Latinized Greek and English, with numerous Greek- and Latin-rooted words having become the staple of the current English vocabulary: e.g., superior, inferior, male, female, face, gout, migraine, odor, ointment, pain, venom, acne, basis, chaos, character, criterion, dogma, horizon, stigma, asthma, trauma, etc.

After a small group of Italian doctors formed an influential medical school in Salerno (Italy) in the Middle Ages, they revived and celebrated the teachings of Greek physicians, such as Hippocrates and Galen. Medical schools all over Europe followed suit, uniformly using the amalgam of Greek and Latin terminology. This Latinized form of Greek is used by medical scientists to this day.

Word Formation

As mentioned before, Greek doctors were particularly skillful diagnosticians. For this reason, Greek terms often occur in clinical terminology, e.g., cardiology, nephropathy, gastritis, whereas Latin words make up most anatomical terms: e.g., cor, ren, or ventriculus.

Greek is a great source of specialized terminology thanks to its linguistic malleability, namely, its amazing suitability for building compound words. When the rapid expansion of medical science during the last two centuries required a stock of new terms for the newly discovered diseases and the invented medical tools, Greek words, often in their Latinized forms, became the way to go. In fact, almost a half of the widely used medical terminology, although based on Greek and Latin, is less than one-century-old.

Table 1 below shows some words for organs or parts of human body in Greek paired with the common medical conditions and human organs in plain English:

Organ in Greek	Organ in English	Adjective/Disease
brachion	arm	brachial/ --
derma	skin	dermal/dermatitis
hepar	liver	hepatic/hepatitis
kardia	heart	cardiac/carditis
nephros	kidney	nephric/nephrosis
osteon	bone	osteal/osteoma

* Organs or parts of human body associated with nominal terms

Common diagnostic suffixes

Procedure Suffixes	Lay Description	Term	Meaning
-ec-tomy	cutting out	mastectomy hysterectomy	surgical removal of the breast surgical removal of the womb
-emia	in the blood	uremia	urea in the blood
-gram	result of imaging	angiogram	blood vessel imaging recording (visible result of the procedure)
-graphy	process of imaging	angiography	blood vessel imaging recording (the procedure)
-itis	inflammation of	arthritis	inflammation of the joint
-logy	study science of	neurology	study of nerves
-plasty	repair	angioplasty	blood vessel repair
-scopy	looking	gastroscopy arthroscopy	looking inside the stomach looking inside the joint
-(o)tomy	cutting	gastrotomy	operation on the stomach

Short grammatical suffixes are attached to word roots to form parts of speech, such as adjectives and nouns. Many of these same suffixes are used in the English language. One group of the grammatical suffixes denote pertaining to, as shown in Table  below

Pertaining to

cardi-ac	pertaining to the heart (cardi: heart)
neur-al	pertaining to a nerve (neur: nerve)
muscul-ar	pertaining to muscle (muscul: muscle)
pulmon-ary	pertaining to the lungs (pulmon: lung)
esophag-eal	pertaining to the esophagus (esophag: esophagus)
thorac-ic	pertaining to the chest (thorac: chest)
poster-ior	pertaining to the back (of the body) (poster: back (of body), behind, posterior)
cutane-ous	pertaining to the skin (cutane: skin)
acous-tic	pertaining to hearing (acous: hearing)

Prefixes: Position, Number, Measurement, and Direction

Prefix	Lay Description	Examples	Meaning
ab-	away from	abductor	leading away from
ad-	towards	adductor	leading towards
ante-	before	antenatal	before birth
bi-	two	biceps	two-headed (muscle)
anter(o)-	front	anterior	at the front front
epi-	on top of	epidural	on top of the dura
endo-	inside	endoscopy	looking inside
intra-	in between	intracostal	between the ribs
para-	alongside	parathyroid	alongside the thyroid
peri-	around	perinatal	around birth
post-	after	postnatal	after birth
pre-	before	prenatal	before birth
poster(o)-	behind back	posterior	at the back behind
inter-	between	interpersonal	between people
meta-	beyond after	metastasis	secondary growth secondary spread (of canc

Prefixes relating to position in the body

Prefix	Meaning of Prefix	Examples	Meaning
a-	no	aphasia	no speech
neo-	new	neoplasia	new growth (cancer)
dys-	abnormal	dysfunctional dysmenorrhea	not functioning normally abnormal menstrual periods
macr(o)-	large	macroscopic	visible to the naked eye
micr(o)-	small	microscopic	visible only using a microscope
poly-	many	polyuria	[passing] a lot of urine
olig(o)-	few	oliguria	not [passing] much urine
megal(o)-	large	megacolon	abnormally enlarged colon
erythr(o)-	red	erythrocyte	red [blood] cell
leuk(o)-	white	leukemia	“white blood”
cyan(o)-	blue	cyanosis	having a bluish color
melan(o)-	black	melanoma	black swelling
hyper-	higher over-	hyperglycemia hyperactive	high blood sugar level overactive
hypo-	underneath below	hypoglycemia	low blood sugar level
sub-	underneath below	subnormal	lower than normal
super-	higher over-	superjacent	lying (just) above
uni-	one	unilateral	on one side
ambi-	both	ambilateral	on both sides

To Summarize

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Author

➡ Marianthi

• Ευγενική χορηγία που στοχεύει να βοηθήσει μαθητές ή μη, απανταχού της Γης, που επιδίδονται στην εκμάθηση της ελληνικής γλώσσας!
• Contribution bénévole visant à aider les personnes, partout dans le monde, qui sont engagées dans l'apprentissage de la langue grecque !
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Source :

https://www.transcendwithwords.com/post/medical-terminology-greek-and-latin-origins-and-word-formation-guidelines