Question:
Doctors always sound so cool when they use all those big words. I want to sound cool too but don't have years for college plus I'm not that smart. How can I sound like a doctor?
Background:
Doctors, nurses, emts, even veterinarians, use these really cool, big words to describe regular stuff. a "Subdural hematoma" means a bruise for example. This is because they all took a college level medical terminology class and then hung around for years with other "medical terminologist" until it just stuck.
Our reader wants to know how to sound all cool without having to spend all that money on college. Turns out its easier to speak doctor than you might think.
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| Me Talk Doctor |
So What's the Answer:
We here at Save the Pointless Facts (SPF) love to sound smart so we got right on this one. First of all, there are several free online medical dictionaries, most of them apparently based on Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Here's "The Free Dictionary's" Version. If you've got a few minutes before you need to be tossing medical terms around, look them up here.
If you're working on the fly, here are some basic rules to remember:
1. Medical terminology is based on Greek with touches of Latin. So, use the Latin names for things. For example, hemorrhage is hemorrhage because the Latin word for blood is "heme." Stomach things are gatro-, etc. etc.
2. Greek uses "o" to link two or more words together so you can make lots of really cool, medical sounding words by linking the few words you know, "gastroenterology" is the study of the stomach and intestines. Gatr-, -enter-, ology."
3. The Greeks were mad on prefixes and suffixes. Sub-, -ology, -ectomy, Pre-, Intra-, the Greeks just couldn't get enough. Throw a few prefixes and suffixes in there and you'll be talking medical in no time.
It can get crazy fun. Here's a real medical term for you to work on Oopherectosalpingoectomy. Looking at the rules above, we can see that its three words and a suffix all hooked together with -o- but what could it mean? We'll give you a hint. Elton John got it right when he said, "It's a little piece of Momma daddy never had."
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