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Comment by wgm | Hacker News Reader

Cecil’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.

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Actually -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.

I 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’.

Anatomy derives from Latin. Physiology, pathophysiology and operational terms derive from Greek.

Amusingly, the word anatomy (“dissection”) is from Greek via Latin, from the very same root that we’re discussing here.

Other English terms from the Greek root for “cut”: tomography (imaging through a lot of cross-sections); entomology (study of in-sects, critters with sect-ions in their bodies); dichotomy (division into two possibilities); atom (that which cannot be divided).

I was going to ask "What's an Ana and why are we cutting it?"

“Up” or “thoroughly”, apparently? Same prefix as in analysis, anaphora, anamorphism. Ancient Greek had a sprawling system of prefixes that one can’t really pick up by osmosis, it seems.

(Complaints about noun morphology sound a bit hypocritical from a native speaker of Russian, I know, but it is what it is.)

Same Ana as in Analysis, anaphylactic, anamorphic...

my latin teacher would always go on about how romans just copied the greek language (and more etc etc).

Doctors speak Greek; lawyers speak Latin.

And yet it's all Greek to most.

Speaking Greek would’ve made medical school a little easier

Yes, but not dramatically simpler.

I have to ask: is there a Greek equivalent for "it's all Greek to me"?

Edit: I just did an internet search and found you use Chinese or Turkish instead. Never mind me.

We use Chinese in the French equivalent too

And Turks use French for that.

Evet, epey Fransız kalıyoruz.

Finding equivalent idioms in different languages is one of the most fun things to do with LLMs.

One of the tricky parts, if you plan to actually use the idioms, is that they very greatly between different regions that use the same language. Particularly tricky with Spanish, considering so many countries on so many different continents use it. I haven't found LLMs to be good at knowing what regions use any given expression.

in German we say "I only understand train station and departure"...

But we use a country name in the sentence: "That seems Spanish to me" (Das kommt mir spanisch vor) although that would 'translate' to "That seems fishy to me"

loll Spanish people must be very pleased hearing this...

Italians use "Arabic"

Greek physician from a family of Greek physicians confirms this. :)

Let me just add, that in the Western Medicine many words from anatomy come from Latin and many words from physiology/pathology come from Greek. Of course the Greeks themselves have their own words for anatomy as well.

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