The Pause that Refreshes (an interlude)

I have been fighting a cold the last couple of days.  I think it is on the outs.  I, however, become very good at putting things off when I am in that state, as evidenced by this blog.  <sigh>  But I am back now and eager to update everything that has been going on.  Starting with my medical terminology endeavors.  But before I do I am going to digress.  So, lets get right to it, shall we?

Linguistics:Prefixes and Suffixes

When I was in public school the class that I could have done without most was English.  I didn't see the need to, nor was I interested in the theories of how sentences are formed or why they do what the do; I could talk and make myself understood, I could write and get my point across; These were things I just "got" (or so I believed).  But that was then and this is now.  Today as I explore the different pieces of the words that make up the terms so frequently used in the medical profession I find myself incredibly fascinated.

As you may have noticed from viewing my former posts the "quest" for knowledge is very rarely a straight line for me.  I started this blog with the intent of it being a "learn one thing new each day" type endeavor and find that I end up learning ten.  I thought that was just a phenomenon of the beginning (ie. large gaps in knowledge that needed filling to move forward), but it continues in these posts.  This will, most assuredly, be a reoccurring theme throughout these posts.  I will try not to bring it up too often, but I find it quite interesting {smile}.

The reason I bring this up is that while my search for insight into the different medical terms was fairly straightforward, I then started to look into WHY the words were organized the way they were (you know..... those topics I didn't care to pay attention to in high school).  And found it fascinating.  It lead me to the study of linguistics.  From there I delved into what makes suffixes and prefixes.

Linguistics is the scientific study of the human language.  It can be broken into 3 basic branches:  The study of language form, language meaning, and language context. To explore this topic in any sort of depth, be it basic level or otherwise, would take us down more rabbit holes then I care to count.  So in the interest of keeping these posts short(er), and thus more engaging I am going to shelve a deeper explanation for the moment.  What I am interested in is language form and of that topic only a sliver of it, called morphology(which, in part, is the formation of words).  Which leads to the next part...

Prefixes and Suffixes:

We are taught in elementary school that by adding little pieces to a word either at the front or at the end we can change that words meaning.  This is the job of the prefix (from the Latin præfigere "to fix in front") and the suffix (from the Latin suffixus "fastened below").  The prefix can change the meaning of a word in many ways and those ways are varied and confusing.  Take the prefix "un" for example.  "Un", can mean "not, or opposite of" or it can mean "reverse action".  Case in point is the word "unlockable".  Based on the first meaning this word means "not lockable" but in the second it means "able to be unlocked". (It was stuff like this that confounded and frustrated me in school because there were no hard perfect rules to the English language; there were ALWAYS exceptions....  well, except sometimes {grin}.  Now I find it fascinating and beautiful.  To speak and write the English language well is arguably an art form.)  Then there is the suffix.   

The suffix is placed at the end of a word and its uses are a little more straightforward.  There are inflectional and derivational suffixes.  I was going to try and write the differences in my own words but the description given on Wikipedia is concise and well written.  I recommend you check it out.  

All this gives me a bit of a better understand and at the same time muddies the waters a little further, which is just like the English language. {grin}  Later today I shall be putting up Part 2 of my Medical Terminology post.  Until then, hope you are enjoying your weekend.