Components of Medical Words

Most medical terms are compound words made up of root words which are
combined with prefixes (at the start of a word) and suffixes (at the end of a word).
Thus medical terms that may at first seem very complex can be broken down into
their component parts to give you a basic idea of their meaning. For example the
word neuroblastoma

neuro- means nerve
blast- relates to immature cells
-oma means tumour.

Therefore by breaking down a complex word we can see that neuroblastoma

literally means a tumour made up of immature nerve cells.

To take another type of tumour: osteogenic sarcoma

osteo- means bone
-genic means creating / causing

Thus we can see that this is a bone forming tumour.

All medical terms have a root word. They may also have a prefix, a suffix, or both
a prefix and a suffix.

Prefixes have a droppable "o", which acts to connect the prefix to root words
which begin with a consonant. As a general rule, the "o" is dropped when
connecting to a root word beginning with a vowel (a, e, i, i, u).

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form
and meaning have changed over time. Most medical words derive from ancient
Greek and Latin.