Medical Terminology

Ordinary people have a problem in dealing with medical terminology because it sounds so alien to them. Fortunately though, there are a few rules that they can memorize to simplify everything they come across with. In high school lessons, we are taught to add prefixes to words in order to indicate their tenses and also suffixes to indicate their functions.

Just like in any other highly technical and scientific expertise, people had to devise a way to fully create a systematic assignment of words so that there can be no confusion and to ensure that there are no repeat ideas from two different countries talking about the same thing.
The difference in making arbitrary words out of nowhere compared to one with rules one how to assign the words for everything that is connected to a virtually infinite interaction of the human body and the environment around it.

One good technique in trying to comprehend medical terminology is to break down the words into its prefix and then into its root word and finally its suffix. If you happen to know the meaning of each and every component, then you will most probably have no time in understanding the meaning of the word. The same thing also applies to learning foreign languages. You try to know at least one vocabulary at a time first, as you encounter words that are not familiar to you, you can use context clues to decipher the meaning of the whole sentence. It is a simple matter of filling in the blanks.

As you get to know the rules on how to create medical terminology just as you would in learning a new language, everything starts to fall into place. If all else fails and you still can’t decipher the meaning of the word, you can always use an online reference. Try to be careful of other implications though, because some terms have inherent connections to law, business, and general human interest terminology that would give the meaning an entirely different point of view.

A case in point, if you have a word like meningitis and you know that the meaning of the first root word “meninges” is referring to the central nervous system as a whole and the meaning of the suffix attachment is “inflammation”, you can logically assume that the meaning of the word “meningitis” is an inflammation of the central nervous system. Of course this is a very easy example and should not be treated as the only possibility in deciphering the meaning of medical terminology.

You will also encounter very awkward terms in medical terminology since a lot of root words come from either Latin or Greek words. In cases where the root word is very awkward to pronounce or incapable of standing alone, you can try adding a suffix to the root word to make it a usable English term. A good example of this is the Greek word “kardia” which means “concerning the heart”. If ever you use it in an English sentence, it would not make sense to have a sentence that reads, “the old man suffered a kardia event”. Obviously, it would sound more acceptable if you use the suffix “ac” in addition to the word “kardia”. As you can see, medical terminology isn’t so bad when you get to know the rules of how to form the words.