9/25/21, 11:17 AM Basic Word Structure | Module 1 | Medical Terminology | edX

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Medical Terminology
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Building Words
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Building Words for the Medical Language

 All medical terms have one or more
 The suffix is the word ending.
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 
language of medicine the first thing
to do is to understand
how to divide words into their
component parts.
Let’s look at an example: Hematology
– Hema (blood): root
O: Combining vowel Logy (process of
study): suffix
The root is the foundation of the
word.
roots.
The suffix is the word ending.
All medical terms have a suffix.
The combining vowel, usually an “o”
links the root to the suffix or to
another root.
The combining vowel has not
meaning of its own it just joins one
work part to another.
1.0x It is useful to read the meaning of the
   
medical term starting from the suffix

Summarized in The Language of Medicine by Davi-Ellen Chabner are the 5 basic elements from
which medical terms are built:
1. Root: foundation of the term (all medical terms have one or more root elements)
2. Suffix: word ending (all medical terms have a suffix element)
3. Prefix: word beginning (not all terms have a prefix)
4. Combining Vowel: vowel (usually o) that links the root to the suffix or the root to another root
5. Combining Form: combination of the root and the combining vowel
Davi-Ellen Chabner’s book The Language of Medicine also provides three general rules to remember
when building medical terms:
1. READ the meaning of medical terms from the suffix back to the beginning of the term and across.
2. DROP the combining vowel (usually o) before a suffix beginning with a vowel: gastritis, not
gastroitis.
3. KEEP the combining vowel between two roots: gastroenterology, not gastrenterology.
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