9.3: §140. A Polyglot Guide to Human Anatomy

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§140. A Polyglot Guide to Human Anatomy

The following lexicon should not be taken too seriously. It is a rough-and-ready attempt to match up names of human body parts and organs in English, Greek,^[1] and Latin. Any serious effort to learn anatomical and medical terminology should be a task of many weeks, even months; a two-page summary can only provide a glimpse of what is required. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how few specialized roots one needs to learn, after a course of this kind, in order to manage quite well in recognizing—if not fully understanding—highly technical medical terms.

You will see at once that some of the words below are seldom if ever used in scientific discourse; those forms are provided merely for the sake of comparison.

A. The Head and Mouth					NOUN	ADJECTIVE
E	skull	G	cranion	L	> cranium
	head		cephalē		caput, capit-	capitalis
	brain		encephalos		cerebrum	cerebralis
	eye		ophthalmos		oculus	ocularis
	ear		ōt-		aur-is	auralis
	nose		rhin-		nasus	nasalis^[2]
	mouth		stom(at)-		os, or-is	oralis
	lip		cheil-		labium	labialis
	tooth		odont-		dens, dent-is	dentalis
	gum				gingiva	gingivalis
	tongue		glōssa		lingua	lingualis

B. The Digestive System (the alimentary canal < L alere, “nourish”)
E	throat, gullet	G	(o)eso-phag-us	L	gula (non-medical)
	belly, maw		gastēr, gastr- stomachos		ventr- (dim. ventriculum) > stomachus
	small intestine (“innards”)		enteron (< entos)		intestinum (< intus) duodenum (“12” [fingers]) jejunum (“hungry”) ileum
	liver		hēpat-		jecur (non-medical)
	pancreas		pancreat- (“all flesh”)
	large intestine		cōlon (orig. “limb”) prōctos		c(a)ecum (“blind”) +[colon] rectum (“straight”) + anus

At the risk of appearing scatological, we can deal briefly with the end product (or by-product) of the alimentary canal. The old English word shit has an etymology that links it with the Greek root σχιζ- (“split”), source of E schism, schist, and schizophrenia. Greek σκωρ, σκατ-ος (whence scatological) may be matched with Latin excrementum; the words for animal dung were κοπρος and stercus. (Some mushrooms may be described as coprophilic, and disgusting speech is known as coprolalia —“dung talk.”) E feces, now a standard technical term for excrement, is derived from a Latin word that had nothing to do with excretion: L faeces (“wine-dregs”) still meant “dregs” or “sediment” in English until 1639. Etymologically speaking, therefore, defecate means “to get the dregs out.”

C. The Respiratory System
E	breath breathe	G	pneum(at)- pne-	L	spiritus respirare, respiratus
	throat		pharynx, pharyng-
	voice-box		larynx, laryng-
	windpipe		trachea
	2 tubes		bronchi		bronchi-ole (mod. dim.)
	lung		pneumōn-		pulmo, pulmon-is

D. The Circulatory System (cardiovascular)
E	heart	G	cardia	L	cor, cord-is
	blood		h(a)em(at)-		sanguis, sanguin-is
	vessel		angeion (> angi-)		vas (dim. vasculum)
	artery		artēria
	vein		phlebs, phleb-os		vena
	clot		thrombos

E. The Urinary-Reproductive System (urogenital)
E	kidney	G	nephros	L	renes (plural)
	bladder		cyst-		vesica (dim. vesicle = cyst)
	urine		ouron (> ur-)		urina
male:
	testicle		orchid-		testis (pl. testes; dim. testiculus)
	penis		phallos		penis (vulg. mentula, F.)
	sperm		sperm(at)- gonos		semen
					vas deferens
female:
	breast		mastos (M.)		mamma
	egg		oon		ovum
	ovary		oophoron		ovarium
	womb		hystera		uterus (M.); also matrix
	vagina		colpos		vagina (“sheath,” “scabbard”) [vulg. cunnus, M.]
	month		mēn-		mensis, plural menses
	monthly				menstruum (> menstru-are)

9.03: 140. A Polyglot Guide to Human Anatomy#sdfootnote2sym The Greek transliterations use κ > c and χ > ch, so that the words may be more easily recognized. ↵
From the Latin verb olfacere (“smell”) is derived the English adjective olfactory.↵