99 Fun Facts About Medical Terminology

The suffix -itis, as in tonsillitis and appendicitis, means what?

Inflammation and infection are not the same thing: an inflamed joint in arthritis usually has no germ in it at all.

A mastectomy, appendectomy or tonsillectomy all involve what?

Surgical removal of both breasts was Angelina Jolie's choice in 2013, after tests showed a faulty BRCA1 gene gave her a high risk of breast cancer.

A colostomy or tracheostomy involves surgically creating what?

An opening called a stoma, from the Greek for mouth, is often only temporary: once the bowel beyond it has rested and healed, surgeons can reverse it.

Rhinoplasty and arthroplasty share the suffix -plasty, meaning what?

Surgical repair or formation is the sense, from the Greek for moulding, so plastic surgery got its name about 70 years before plastic the material did.

Myalgia is pain in which tissue?

Muscle soreness felt days after hard exercise is not lactic acid at work: researchers have found little link between lactate levels and that later pain.

What does the suffix -emia, as in anemia, septicemia and leukemia, refer to?

A blood condition is the sense, and leukemia literally means 'white blood', named for the abnormal white cells that build up in a patient's blood.

Sarcoma, lipoma and teratoma share the suffix -oma, meaning what?

A tumour, mass or fluid pocket takes -oma: benign growths carry it alone, as in lipoma, yet melanoma, a cancer, confusingly carries it too.

Splenomegaly and cardiomegaly describe an organ that is what?

Enlarged spleens are why people with glandular fever are told to avoid contact sports: a swollen spleen can rupture.

A colonoscopy, endoscopy or arthroscopy is an examination performed how?

With a viewing instrument inside the bowel, doctors can also snip out polyps through the same scope during the test, with no open surgery.

Diarrhea and rhinorrhea share a suffix meaning what?

Flow or discharge is the sense, and diarrhea's fluid loss causes dehydration, which a cheap drink of clean water, sugar and salt treats.

Dyspnea, apnea and tachypnea all describe some aspect of what?

Breathing that repeatedly stops and starts during sleep is sleep apnea, and many patients sleep with a CPAP machine pumping air into a mask.

What does the suffix -penia, as in leukopenia and thrombocytopenia, indicate?

A deficiency of white blood cells, which chemotherapy can cause, leaves patients more open to infections, since those cells are the body's main defence.

Amniocentesis and thoracentesis share the suffix -centesis, which describes what procedure?

Puncturing to draw off fluid is how amniocentesis works: a thin needle draws amniotic fluid so the baby can be checked for genetic conditions.

What does the surgical suffix -rrhaphy, as in herniorrhaphy, mean?

Suturing or stitching alone can leave tissue under tension, and tense repairs recur more often, so most hernia operations now add a sheet of mesh.

Lithotripsy, a treatment for kidney stones, literally means what?

Stone crushing can now be done from outside the body: in the commonest method, shock waves shatter kidney stones into pieces that pass out in urine.

Arthrodesis is a procedure that does what to a joint?

Fuses or binds it for good: the bones grow into one, so the joint becomes much less painful but can no longer move.

Osteomalacia is a condition in which bone becomes what?

Softened bones in children are called rickets rather than osteomalacia, usually caused by too little vitamin D or calcium, and the main sign is bowed legs.

Hemiplegia is paralysis affecting how much of the body?

One half of the body is affected, and one stroke therapy restrains the stronger arm so the patient is forced to use the weaker one.

Dysphagia, not to be confused with dysphasia, affects which everyday ability?

Swallowing problems matter because food or drink can go the wrong way into the lungs and cause aspiration pneumonia.

Bradycardia and tachycardia describe a heart that is beating how?

Slowly and fast, respectively, yet a slow heart is not always a problem: trained athletes often have one because their hearts pump more efficiently.

Which prefix means 'below normal', as in dangerously low body temperature or blood pressure?

Hypo- is the prefix, and people dying of hypothermia sometimes strip off their clothes despite the cold, a behaviour known as paradoxical undressing.

The prefix dys-, as in dysentery and dyslexia, means what?

Bad, difficult or abnormal is the sense, as in dyslexia, a difficulty with reading that does not affect intelligence.

What does the prefix peri-, as in pericardium, mean?

Around the heart, the pericardium can fill with fluid and squeeze it, a dangerous condition called cardiac tamponade.

What does the prefix oligo- mean, as in oliguria or the political term oligarchy?

Few or little is the sense, and oliguria, passing too little urine, can be a sign of dehydration.

Hepatology, hepatitis and hepatocyte all concern which organ?

The liver can regrow after part of it is removed, which is why a living donor can give a portion of theirs for transplant.

A cholecystectomy removes which organ?

The gallbladder is most often removed because gallstones cause repeated bouts of severe pain.

The root myel-, as in myeloma and myelin, refers to which two structures?

Bone marrow and the spinal cord share this root, and in multiple sclerosis the immune system attacks myelin, the insulating cover of nerve cells.

Blepharoplasty, often done as cosmetic surgery, operates on which part of the body?

The eyelids are not only a cosmetic target: sagging upper-lid skin can be removed to restore vision that it blocks.

Onychophagy is the medical name for what habit?

Nail biting is often tackled with a clear, bitter-tasting nail polish, which makes chewing the nails unpleasant.

Which colour does the root cyan(o)- denote, as in cyanosis, the tinge of oxygen-starved lips?

Erythr- is red (erythrocyte, a red blood cell), leuk- is white (leukocyte), melan- is black (melanin) and chlor- is green (chlorophyll).

Polydactyly is being born with what?

Extra fingers or toes explain the name: Greek daktylos, finger, also named the poetic dactyl, one long syllable then two short, likened to a finger's segments.

A laparotomy is an incision into what?

The abdominal wall is opened in an exploratory laparotomy, done when the cause of a belly problem is unknown or after severe abdominal trauma.

Hyperhidrosis is an excess of what?

Sweating on this scale can be treated with Botox injections, which block the nerve signals that switch on the sweat glands.

Which letter is the usual combining vowel used to join medical word parts?

O is the usual link because it helps pronunciation, joining a root to a suffix, as in cardiology, or two roots, as in gastroenteritis.

In anatomy, 'proximal' and 'distal' describe how close a structure is to what?

The main mass of the body is the reference, and it matters in the leg: a clot in the proximal veins, above the knee, is usually more dangerous than one in the calf.

Which anatomical division splits the body into left and right portions?

The sagittal plane, run down the midline, gives near mirror-image halves outside only: inside, the heart sits slightly to the left of the breastbone.

If a symptom is 'contralateral' to a brain injury, where is it?

On the opposite side, because most motor nerve fibres cross over in the brainstem, so a stroke in the left brain typically weakens the right side.

A patient lying face-up on their back is in which position?

Supine is the safe way to put babies down to sleep: placing infants on their backs cuts the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

On a prescription, what does 'stat' mean?

Immediately, from Latin statim: prescriptions use Latin shorthand because Latin was for centuries the shared language of European medicine.

A patient marked NPO before surgery must do what?

Take nothing by mouth before surgery keeps the stomach empty, since food could be breathed into the lungs under anaesthesia.

A drug prescribed 'b.i.d.' or BID is taken how often?

Twice a day comes from Latin bis in die, and the same bis gave us biscuit, bread that was originally baked twice.

On a prescription, the abbreviation 'gtt' is an instruction to give what?

Drops is the meaning, and eye doctors advise pressing the inner corner of the eye afterwards, so a drop soaks in instead of draining into the nose.

The Rx symbol at the top of a prescription is an abbreviation of which Latin word?

Recipe is Latin for 'take!', and the word moved from doctors' prescriptions to cooking instructions only later.

An 'idiopathic' disease is one that is what?

Of unknown cause is the sense, so the label can shrink over time: as research uncovers causes, fewer cases of a disease get called idiopathic.

An 'iatrogenic' condition has been caused by what?

Medical examination or treatment itself can harm: in the 1840s Ignaz Semmelweis found doctors' unwashed hands were spreading deadly childbed fever.

When a doctor calls an illness 'acute', what are they saying about it?

It began recently or suddenly, and that clock matters: for a stroke caused by a clot, clot-busting drugs must start within a few hours of symptoms.

A prognosis differs from a diagnosis in that it does what?

Predicts its likely course: Hippocrates' Book of Prognostics urged doctors to foretell an illness's progress so patients would trust them.

'Palliative' care takes its name from the Latin palliare, meaning what?

To cloak is the root sense: this care eases a serious illness's pain and symptoms, and it works best started early, not just at the end.

Who is credited with coining the 45-letter word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis in 1935?

The president of a puzzlers' club, Everett M. Smith, is credited with inventing it to create the longest word, and it became the longest entry in popular dictionaries.

A tumour described as 'benign' is one with what property?

It neither invades nearby tissue nor spreads, yet a benign tumour can still be dangerous if it presses on a vital organ such as the brain.

The Latin word musculus, root of 'muscle', literally means what?

Little mouse is the literal sense, because a flexed biceps was thought to look like a mouse.

The coronal plane of anatomy takes its name from the Latin word for what?

Crown, from Latin corona, is also behind the coronavirus, named for the halo of spikes that makes it look like the sun's corona.

Which membrane covers the outer surface of bones?

Periosteum holds cells that, after a fracture, develop into the bone- and cartilage-making cells essential to healing the break.

What is the shaft of a long bone called?

Diaphysis, Greek for 'growing between', names the shaft between a long bone's growth plates, and once those plates close in adolescence, the bone stops lengthening.

The term 'visceral' is contrasted with which word meaning 'of the wall' of a body cavity or organ?

Parietal pleura lining the ribcage has pain nerves that the visceral pleura covering the lungs lacks, which is why pleurisy brings sharp chest pain.

The anatomical term fascia, for membranous sheets of tissue, comes from the Latin for what?

Band: Latin fascia meant a band or bandage, from fascis, 'bundle', the word that also gave Italian fascio and so the name fascism.

In radiology, what is an X-ray view called when the beam enters the back and exits the front?

Posteroanterior is the standard chest X-ray because it judges heart size more accurately than the reverse anteroposterior film, used when a patient can't stand.

The suffix -cyte, as in astrocyte and erythrocyte, comes from a Greek word meaning what?

A hollow or vessel: science later took Greek kytos to mean 'cell', and Albrecht Kossel and Albert Neumann built that root into the name cytosine, one of DNA's bases.

A frenum, an anatomical structure that keeps something in place, is Latin for what?

Bridle: Latin frenum, a bridle or curb, also gave English 'refrain', from refrenare, to hold back as with a bridle.

Which word for a protective injection comes from the Latin for 'cow', as the first one used cowpox?

Vaccine goes back to Edward Jenner's term Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow'. In 1881 Louis Pasteur proposed stretching the word to cover every protective inoculation.

Which term for isolating travellers who may carry disease comes from the Venetian for 'forty days'?

Quarantine comes from quarantena, the wait imposed on ships in plague years. It followed the trentino, a thirty-day isolation first imposed at Ragusa, modern Dubrovnik, in 1377.

Which French term for sorting casualties by urgency grew out of the work of Napoleon's army surgeons?

Triage is French for picking or sorting, from the verb trier. Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, surgeon to Napoleon's Imperial Guard, treated the wounded by gravity of injury, regardless of rank.

Which Greek mythological figure gives his name to the top vertebra, the bone that supports the skull?

Atlas, condemned to bear the weight of the heavens for rebelling against Zeus, lends his name to the first cervical vertebra, which carries the head.

The 'mellitus' in diabetes mellitus records which taste early physicians noticed in patients' urine?

Sweet urine gave the disease its Latin tag mellitus, 'honey-sweet'. Ancient Indian physicians called it 'honey urine' after noticing that it attracted ants.

Which term for bad breath, coined in 1874, became a household word through 1920s Listerine advertising?

Halitosis was coined by physician Joseph William Howe from the Latin halitus, 'breath'. Listerine, invented as a surgical antiseptic, was then marketed as its cure.

Despite its common name, ringworm, known to doctors as tinea, is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus causes ringworm, and no worm is involved. The same kind of infection on the feet is athlete's foot, and in the groin it is jock itch.

Ascorbic acid, the chemical name for vitamin C, was named for its action against which sailors' disease?

Scurvy is the 'scorbutic' disease hidden in the name. Walter Haworth and Albert Szent-Györgyi proposed 'a-scorbic acid' for a compound first known as hexuronic acid.

Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is the scientific term for which brief pain familiar to ice-cream lovers?

Brain freeze usually lasts only a few seconds to two minutes and passes without treatment. Some research has found it to be more common in people who get migraines.

Which structures did ancient physicians regard as air ducts, having found them empty of blood after death?

Arteries take their name from the Greek arteria, which also meant 'windpipe'. From the 14th to the 16th century the English word 'artery' could itself mean the trachea.

Which instrument, named from the Greek for 'breast' and 'to look', did the French physician René Laennec invent?

Stethoscope began as a wooden tube: Laennec was not comfortable pressing his ear to a woman's chest, and found that a rolled piece of paper carried heart sounds well.

Which tube did Benjamin Franklin build in a flexible form for a brother suffering from bladder stones?

Catheter comes from a Greek verb meaning 'to send down', for the fluid it drains. Franklin's design was metal, with hinged segments and a wire inside for rigidity.

Which Latin word meaning 'I shall be pleasing' names an inactive treatment used as a control in drug trials?

Placebo has a darker twin, the nocebo: an inert substance that the patient expects to do damage, named from the Latin for 'I shall harm'.

Which name did the physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. propose for the state produced by inhaling ether?

Anesthesia was Holmes's suggestion in a letter to William Morton, the Boston dentist who had just demonstrated painless surgery with ether in October 1846.

Which painkiller did Friedrich Sertürner name after the Greek god of dreams because it tended to cause sleep?

Morphine was first called morphium, after Morpheus. In experiments he reported in 1817, Sertürner gave it to himself and three young boys, and all four almost died.

Influenza takes its name from medieval Italian phrases blaming illness on the influence of the cold or of what?

The stars were blamed in the phrase influenza di stelle, attested from the 14th century. The Italian word goes back to the medieval Latin influentia, 'visitation' or 'influence'.

Which infection, caused by a bacterium common in soil and manure, is nicknamed 'lockjaw' after its first sign?

Tetanus comes from the Greek for 'tension' or 'rigid'. After the jaw locks, facial spasms can follow that doctors call risus sardonicus.

Which inherited disorder did Queen Victoria pass on to the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia?

Hemophilia, Greek for 'love of blood', became known as 'the royal disease'. Tsarevich Alexei, heir of Tsar Nicholas II, inherited it through Empress Alexandra, a granddaughter of Victoria.

Which joint condition, most often striking the base of the big toe, was once called 'the disease of kings'?

Gout earned its royal label through its link with a rich diet and obesity, and it was also known as 'rich man's disease'.

Lateral epicondylitis, a soreness on the outer side of a joint, is better known by which sporting nickname?

Tennis elbow is classically linked to racquet sports, yet many people who get it play none, and work can bring it on too. It is also called pickleball elbow.

Which head injury, a common result of contact sports, is named from the Latin for 'to shake violently'?

Concussion comes from the Latin concutere, yet being knocked out is rare: fewer than 10% of sports-related cases among children involve a loss of consciousness.

Which clouding of the lens of the eye takes its name from a Latin word that also means 'waterfall'?

Cataract may owe its medical sense to another meaning of the Latin cataracta, 'portcullis', through the idea of an obstruction coming down over the sight.

Which gland did the 17th-century anatomist Thomas Wharton give a name that comes from the Greek for 'shield-shaped'?

Thyroid means shield-like, but the gland, which sits in the neck below the Adam's apple, is now usually described as butterfly-shaped.

Which blood-sugar hormone takes its name from the Latin for 'island', after the cell clusters that release it?

Insulin comes from the islets of Langerhans, tissue clumps first spotted in 1869 by Paul Langerhans, who was then a medical student in Berlin.

Which name for adrenaline did John Abel coin from Greek words that, like the Latin ones, mean 'upon the kidney'?

Epinephrine pairs the Greek epi, 'upon', with nephros, just as adrenaline pairs the Latin ad with ren. Abel had prepared his extract from adrenal glands as early as 1897.

Which medical term for hair loss comes from the Greek word for 'fox', an animal that sheds its coat?

Alopecia recalls the fox either because it sheds its coat twice a year or because foxes in ancient Greece often lost their fur to mange.

Which term, joining the Greek for 'life' and 'a sight', did the dermatologist Ernest Besnier introduce to medicine?

Biopsy began in 1879 as the French word biopsie. The test extracts sample cells or tissues so that the presence or extent of a disease can be determined.

Ibuprofen, aspirin and paracetamol all work as which kind of drug, named from the Greek for 'against fever'?

Antipyretics take their name from the Greek pyretos, 'fever' or 'burning heat', a relative of pyr, 'fire'. They make the hypothalamus override a rise in temperature.

Warfarin, first sold widely as a rat poison, belongs to which class of drugs known as blood thinners?

Anticoagulants prolong the time blood takes to clot, which is why patients on warfarin have their clotting time checked every one to four weeks.

Which treatment did the physician Willem Kolff pioneer with a machine built from sausage casings and juice cans?

Dialysis first saved a patient's life in 1945, two years after Kolff finished that prototype, which also contained used car parts.

Which medical name for hives, an itchy raised rash, comes from the Latin word for 'nettle'?

Urticaria usually clears quickly: fewer than 5% of cases last for more than six weeks, the point at which doctors call it chronic.

Which medical term for fainting is also the grammarians' word for dropping sounds from the middle of a word?

Syncope is literally a 'cutting short' in Greek. The sense of a fainting fit is the older one in English, in use by about 1400, before the grammar term arrived in the 1520s.

Which section of the gut has a Latin name recording its length of twelve finger-widths?

Duodenum translates the name given by the Greek physician Herophilus, who measured it at about the breadth of 12 fingers. German still calls it the Zwölffingerdarm.

Which groove between the nose and the upper lip takes its name from the Greek for 'love charm'?

Philtrum is not a purely human feature: the vertical groove is common to therian mammals, the group made up of marsupials and placentals.

Which term for grinding the teeth, a habit most sufferers are unaware of, comes from the Greek for 'to gnash'?

Bruxism often happens during sleep, when its symptoms are most intense right after waking and then slowly ease. The word itself was coined only in the early 1930s.

Which term covers the 'pins and needles' tingling felt after a limb has 'fallen asleep'?

Paresthesia of this kind often follows obdormition, the numbness of a limb that has 'gone to sleep'. It comes from a temporary restriction of nerve impulses, usually from leaning or resting on the limb.

Which bedside technique did Leopold Auenbrugger develop after testing wine casks in his father's cellar?

Percussion is tapping on the chest or abdomen to judge the structures underneath from the sound. Auenbrugger checked his findings against post-mortem specimens for ten years.

Which term, built on the Greek word for 'disease', describes an infection that a patient picks up in hospital?

Nosocomial goes back to nosokomeion, the Greek for an infirmary, from words meaning 'disease' and 'to tend'. Direct contact is the most frequent way such infections spread.

Which term for the early symptoms that warn of a coming illness is from the Greek for 'a running forward'?

Prodrome first meant simply 'a forerunner' in English, a sense that is now obsolete. The pathology sense of a warning symptom is recorded by 1834.

Which term of Greek origin, probably imitating the sound itself, do doctors use for a rumbling stomach?

Borborygmus is the noise of the gut's contents being pushed through the small intestine by waves of contraction called peristalsis.