7 ms·
What’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy? (1986)
- mmastrac 2y agoIn pop culture, there's a very common mixup between tracheotomy (the actual incision or cut made into the trachea) and tracheostomy (the overall procedure involving the creation of the hole, aka stoma).
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoOoooh, that's a great one. Had to pronounce them out in my head a couple times to realize I make that mistake all the time.
- m463 2y agoSo I guess tracheology is the study of throats, and tracheaectomy is what werewolves would do.
- stapedium 2y agoTo 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.
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- ahazred8ta 2y agoI really get piqued when nobody wants to say chiropraxy. 'Chiropractic' is the effin' adjective form! O:-) FML SMH WARH
- digging 2y agoI for one am grateful that chiropractic was named in a way that openly advertised the lack of medical training, expertise, or science involved.
- epcoa 2y agoLaryngologists are head and neck surgeons, in the US and most commonwealth at least where the general training is “otolaryngology-head and neck surgery”. There is further subspecialization in head and neck for oncologic, reconstructive, and (micro)vascular procedures usually just called “head and neck”, true, which is confusing.
- taneq 2y agoAnd a historical dig site is an archaeotomy. :D
- madeofpalk 2y agoI've been watching through Greys Anatomy all year, and eventually they just shorten it to trach', which covers both I guess!
- IncreasePosts 2y agoCase in point, about 40s in: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpt0qf5qowg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpt0qf5qowg
- acheron 2y agoWhen 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.
- camillomiller 2y agoYep, from mys, muscle and mouse (because the movement of the muscle reminds the sudden movements of mice). Fibromyalgia -> Muscle Fiber Pain.
- wildylion 2y agoI think it wasn't because of the movement, but because a particular small muscle looked like a mouse when excised. Oh, no, you seem to be right - it's about the movement. https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle#etymonline_v_19290 https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle#etymonline_v_19290
- chetumal 2y agoHi, 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)
- acheron 2y agoHm, no -- I am in my early 40s and have never had any issues. Other than the scar on my stomach there has been no lasting effect that I've ever noticed.
- tnias23 2y agoAdd -ectomy to the list Edit: I’m stupid
- codetrotter 2y ago> Add -ectomy to the list It’s already there both in the title and in the article
- spapas82 2y agoWell in greek - τομή means cut, incision - εκ-τομη is out+cut (ie remove) - στομία, is from στόμιο which means mouthpiece
- deathanatos 2y agoYour 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.
- romanhn 2y agoMemorizing 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.
- stevage 2y agoWhen 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.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoI read the entire Webster's unabridged dictionary one summer, with special attention to what the root words meant in the original ancient languages. I've only seen the word 'oedemic' one time but it was easy to figure out.
- anthk 2y agoAs a Romance speaker that's almost a builtin superpower.
- BoringTimesGang 2y agoThat's what studying Japanese is like for Chinese speakers.
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- 867-5309 2y agosalpingo-oophorectomy was the first word that sparked my interest in etymology
- lainga 2y agoI 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?
- odnes_lex 2y agoAs 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).
- mr_toad 2y agoClaustro- comes from Latin Claustrum, which shares the same root as the Greek word. Claustrophobia wasn’t a word in Latin or Greek though, it’s a modern hybrid.
- kgeist 2y agoAccording to the etymological dictionary: >From Latin claustrum (“a shut-in place”), from claudō (“I shut, close; I imprison, confine”) + -phobia. First attested in the British Medical Journal So it's not a corruption. It's a neologism.
- IvyMike 2y agoThis might be a lost cause, as there really isn't a great word to use instead, and that usage is in modern dictionaries. Some alternative words are proposed here, but none of them really seem adequate: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/281780/what-is-the-adjective-for-something-that-evokes-claustrophobia https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/281780/what-is-t...
- amyjess 2y agoSimilarly, -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.
- gerdesj 2y agoBack 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.
- ska 2y agoAnother driver for medicine is the need (sometimes) to avoid miscommunication in noisy and fast-paced scenarios (think emergency response, operating rooms when things aren't going well). So along with avoiding colloquial language, there is sometimes particular pronunciation taught.
- zarzavat 2y agoI find that doctors in the UK are very well trained to communicate using common English with patients. They will generally never use medical jargon without being prompted, defaulting to the simplest English first[0], and if they do use medical terms then they generally introduce them. It must be a particular focus of UK medical education. [0] every GP says “tummy” instead of stomach or abdomen, something I find a bit infantile, but it does get the job done.
- epilys 2y agoTo add to other comments, a positive thing with Latin and Greek jargon is that it's not intentionally obtuse, but a combination of stem words aiming to make up literal terms. Anesthesia for example means literally "not feeling". If there wasn't an influence of the classics to the natural sciences it could be notfeeling or notfeel in English.
- ourmandave 2y agoTo the hospital billing dept, it's probably a difference of thousands of dollars. =(
- rsingla 2y agoIt's fascinating how surgical terminology, much like programming languages, uses precise syntax to convey complex operations in a compact form. Just as in coding, where function names like append(), open(), or close() might describe operations on data, surgical terms like -ectomy, -ostomy, and -otomy encapsulate detailed medical procedures on the human body. This linguistic efficiency not only facilitates clear communication among professionals but also mirrors the procedural thinking found in technical fields.
- 4ad 2y agoThe purpose of language is to facilitate communication. Your observation seems trivial at best and tautological at worst.
- mwigdahl 2y agoThere's some value in observing that there is a regularity to the terms used for a particular discipline, as opposed to a jumble of organically-grown jargon. For one, it tells you that learning a seemingly-unconnected vocabulary (Greek suffixes, in this case) can help you understand terms you've never otherwise encountered in their entirety.
- wgm 2y agoCecil’s answer isn’t quite right. “ectomy” is indeed “cut it out” but the first definition he gives for “ostomy” (“cut a hole in something”) is the proper definition for “otomy”. The second “ostomy” definition is correct: creating a stoma (mouth). It’s all Greek, for real.
- _kidlike 2y agoActually -otomy isn't even -otomy... it's -tomy. For example Craniotomy. Cranio-tomy. cranio = κρανίο (skull) tomy = τομή (cut) And -tomy is just a cut, not cut a hole. To cut a hole you'd have to remove a part. Most of the cuts are straight lines and then the skin just opens up like a hole because of stretching. Then, -ostomy is -stomy. Nephrostomy. Nephro-stomy. Nephro = Νεφρό (Kidney) Stomy = Στόμιο (something that has the shape of a mouth) -ectomy is correct... Resource: I'm Greek in a family of 4 doctors.
- wgm 2y agoSpeaking Greek would’ve made medical school a little easier
- EuropeanTech 2y agoYes, but not dramatically simpler.
- xanderlewis 2y agoI didn’t realise so many of these medical terms were Greek rather than Latin. Interesting! Are these terms still used as-is in modern Greek? Much like how translating names of French dishes removes some of the air of sophistication, I feel like being told one is to receive a ‘skull cut’ sounds somewhat more scary than the (to an English speaker) academic-sounding ‘craniotomy’.
- pygy_ 2y agoAnatomy derives from Latin. Physiology, pathophysiology and operational terms derive from Greek.
- geerlingguy 2y agoOoh, something I know a lot about! I had a total proctocolectomy in 2018, and now I have an ostomy :)
- albert_e 2y agoPardon the ignorance 1986 Was this first published in 1986? On the ... internet?
- defrost 2y agoYes, 1986, on Usenet .. a pre WWW internet service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet The same service the Linus | Tannenbaum Minux | Linux debate took place on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
- ThinkingGuy 2y agoThe Straight Dope was also a long-running newspaper column.
- defrost 2y agoGood point, although it also had a very early Usenet prescence, where I first encountered it being in Australia at the time. Maybe there's a Straight Dope reply to the question of when Cecil and Co first posted on Usenet?
- albert_e 2y agoCool So it is republished and hosted as a website now? this web page / site / post must have appeared on WWW much later in that case? Was originally wondering if this web page is itself published in 1986 (styling /css updates may have come later)
- defrost 2y agoThe text of Straight Dope answers appeared in print and on Usenet and is copyright to the date of writing | first publication. The existing text archives would have been ported forward with their original copyright dates some time post 1989 (when Tim Berners-Lee created his WWW specification) likely at least three or four years on as the practice had to spread outside of CERN, outside of the physics community, and early Mosaic browsers to become popular.
- Hackbraten 2y agoThis would make for an excellent tabular XKCD piece.
- rossant 2y ago> ... “colostomy,” in which an opening is cut into the colon to create an artificial anus. (Seems like a waste, considering how many real ones there are already.) Right.
- manyone1 2y agoit was a perfect suno topic -tomy https://suno.com/song/9e8a0cbe-9d85-482b-b196-922a6d38b165 https://suno.com/song/9e8a0cbe-9d85-482b-b196-922a6d38b165
- matheusmoreira 2y agoX-otomy means to cut X. Tomos = cut. Craniotomy means to cut open the skull. It's implied that the cut piece will be put back in place afterwards. X-ectomy means to cut X out. Ecto = out, tomos = cut. Appendectomy = cut out appendix. It's surgically removed from the patient, permanently. X-ostomy means to cut open a hole in X. Stoma = hole/mouth, tomos = cut. Colostomy = cut open a hole in the colon. There's an implication that the hole will be there in the long term. Bonus: XY anastomosis. Open X into Y, connecting them together. Ana = on/upon, stoma = hole/mouth. Ileoanal anastomosis means opening the ileum into the anus, bypassing the colon and rectum. X and Y are implied to have a lumen and the contents of X are implied to flow into Y. Lumen = light, it means a cavity, the interior space of a body structure, such as a blood vessel.
- cantcopy 2y agoHow is this tagged 1986?
- saagarjha 2y agoThe byline, presumably
- kyleblarson 2y agoInteresting read given that I am 2 weeks out from an l4/l5 microdiscectomy / laminotomy.