word root
Meaning of word root: The part that names the body part, and the piece that stays put while prefixes and endings change around it.
Definition of word root
A word root is the core of a medical term, the part carrying its central meaning, almost always the body part or substance involved. Gastr means stomach, derm means skin, nephr means kidney. A root cannot usually stand alone as an English word, and every medical term contains at least one, while many contain two or three.
How does a root differ from the whole word?
The root is the fixed element. Everything attached to it modifies it without replacing it, so a single root generates a large family of terms that all point at the same structure. From the stomach root come inflammation of the stomach, a look inside the stomach, an operation on the stomach and the specialist who deals with all three. Learning roots is therefore the highest-yield part of medical vocabulary, because a few hundred of them unlock many thousands of terms.
Why does one organ have two different roots?
Because the vocabulary was built from two languages. Greek roots supply most terms for disease and treatment, while Latin roots supply most of the formal names of structures. The kidney is a clear case: the Latin ren gives renal and renal failure, while the Greek nephr gives nephritis and the nephrologist who treats it.
| Body part | Greek root | Latin root |
|---|---|---|
| Kidney | nephr, as in nephritis | ren, as in renal |
| Skin | derm, as in dermatitis | cutane, as in subcutaneous |
| Bone | oste, as in osteoporosis | oss, as in osseous |
| Breast | mast, as in mastectomy | mamm, as in mammogram |
| Womb | hyster, as in hysterectomy | uter, as in uterine |
Can one term hold more than one root?
Frequently, and the roots are then read in order. Gastroenterology holds the stomach root and the small intestine root before the ending for a field of study. Cardiopulmonary holds the heart root and the lung root. Where two roots meet, the linking vowel between them is kept even if the second root starts with a vowel, which is why it is gastroenterology rather than gastrenterology. That is a different rule from the one governing endings, where gastritis loses the vowel entirely. Naming a practitioner works the same way, so the skin root plus the ending for a specialist produces dermatologist.
Also known as
Used in a sentence
The word root in the middle of the term identified the organ involved.
Good to know
Many structures carry both a Greek and a Latin root, so terms that look unrelated, such as renal and nephritis, describe the same organ from two different vocabularies.