I am hijacking this thread to express my general displeasure at popular use of the word claustrophobic. "The room is very claustrophobic"?? Really? How else does the wainscoting feel today?
What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
21–30 of 104 posts
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#22Similarly, -itis vs. -osis.
-itis means the part of the body is swollen, while -osis means the part of the body is damaged.
I found this out back in 2012, when I had a very nasty case of tendonitis in one of my feet, and I found out that the vast majority of cases of tendonitis should be called tendinosis instead, as it's pretty rare for the tendons themselves to swell; rather, the tendons themselves deteriorate from overuse.
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment reminds me of my rhetoric professor, who was Greek, and who once expressed to us that memorizing the terms in our lesson should be easy, since they were literally just the words themselves. Of course, it was all Greek to me.
Memorizing a large amount of Greek and Latin word roots was my superpower when I was studying for the SATs. I could decipher a large chunk of words even if I've never seen them before.
When I was in grade six, my teacher made us all learn about half a dozen greek or Latin roots each week. Incredibly useful, I still remember heaps of them decades later.
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess tracheology is the study of throats, and tracheaectomy is what werewolves would do.
To make even more confusing, laryngology is the surgical specialty you would go see for a tracheal issue in the neck. (where a trach is performed) And a head and neck surgeon (oncologic surgery) is the one that performs the most laryngectomies. Fricken otolaryngologists…isnt the one name complicated enough.
[deleted]
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#25Similarly, -itis vs. -osis. -itis means the part of the body is swollen, while -osis means the part of the body is damaged. I found this out back in 2012, when I had a very nasty case of tendonitis in one of my feet, and I found out that the vast majority of cases of tendonitis should be called tendinosis instead, as it's pretty rare for the tendons themselves to swell; rather, the tendons themselves deteriorate from…
Also, hyper- is more, hypo- is less.
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#26Similarly, -itis vs. -osis. -itis means the part of the body is swollen, while -osis means the part of the body is damaged. I found this out back in 2012, when I had a very nasty case of tendonitis in one of my feet, and I found out that the vast majority of cases of tendonitis should be called tendinosis instead, as it's pretty rare for the tendons themselves to swell; rather, the tendons themselves deteriorate from…
itis -> infection.
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#27When I was a newborn I had a "pyloromyotomy", wherein they cut the pyloric muscle. As I understand it, an -otomy is cutting something, a -myotomy is specifically cutting a muscle.
Hi, I also had this done when I was newborn.
i would like to know if you had/have some stomach or gastric symptoms later in life (like I do)
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#28Back in the day, the legal system in the UK deliberately divested itself of some Latin terminology in favour of more modern terms. I think the idea was to open up law a bit to the common man. A lot of legal terms are still thinly veiled Latin, with a soupcon (yes the cedilla is missing - this is English) of Anglo-Saxon and obviously: Old Greek, mashed in. It will make for better telly anyway ...
You might think that medicine should follow suit and it has in its own inimitable way. I have spoken to doctors that are capable of dealing with arses as well as rectums.
All walks of life involve jargon. Law and medicine are famous for being a bit abstruse but that is unfair ... maths, physics and co look shifty and keep quiet. No need to draw attention to themselves.
Engineering is of course a paragon of parsimonious discourse amongst practitioners. Well, engineers are not known for their florid prose but, given the complexity of engineering and the breadth of the term itself, language is going to need to get complicated. Within Civil Eng alone I recall fourth or fifth order differential equations and that's "just" maths.
So, we have three old Greek derived postfixes that are used within medicine. I think they mostly involve cutting, investigation and removal in various combinations, to whatever is the stem word. I'm not a doctor.
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#29I am hijacking this thread to express my general displeasure at popular use of the word claustrophobic . "The room is very claustrophobic"?? Really? How else does the wainscoting feel today?
As a Greek, I feel the need to protest the corruption of the word cleistophobia (kleisto = closed) into claustrophobia.
Claus- sounds like the root of "to cry" (e.g. clausigelos = crying laughter), so a Greek reading claustrophobia thinks of people who are afraid of crying (though the proper rendering of a word composite with that meaning would be klauthmophobia).
Re: What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
#30To the hospital billing dept, it's probably a difference of thousands of dollars. =(