Making Sense of it All Biology Prefixes and

Making Sense of it All Biology Prefixes and Suffixes

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Yes, this is an actual word. What does it mean?

Biology can be filled with words that sometime seem incomprehensible. By "dissecting" these words into discrete units, even the most complex terms can be understood.

Seems hard? Don’t worry you are not alone! Watch People Struggle to Say It (2: 24 for this specific one) Pronouning the Longest Words in English

The following pages are designed to give you the tools needed to understand some of the most common suffixes in biology. By using these prefixes and suffixes even the most difficult words like the one above can be easily understood.

To perform our biology word dissection, we'll need to proceed carefully. Let’s look at the affixes: (pneu-), or (pneumo-) which means lung ultra, meaning extreme microscopic, meaning small (silico-), which refers to silicon (volcano-)which refers to the mineral particles that make up a volcano. (coni-), a derivative of the Greek word konis meaning dust. (-osis) which means affected with.

Considering the prefix (pneumo-) and the suffix (osis), we can determine that the lungs are affected with something. But what? Breaking down the rest of the terms we get extremely small (ultra-microscopic) silicon (silico-) and volcanic (volcano-) dust (coni-) particles. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a disease of the lungs resulting from the inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust. That wasn't so difficult, now was it?

Do other languages do this? Watch this video: The Longest Words in Any Language

Now that we've honed our dissection skills, let's try some frequently used biology terms.

Arthritis (Arth-) refers to joints and (-itis) means inflammation. Arthritis is the inflammation of a joint(s).

Erythrocyte (Erythro-) means red and (-cyte) means cell. Erythrocytes are red blood cells.

Ready for something harder?

Electroencephalogram (electro-), pertaining to electricity, (encephal-) meaning brain, and (-gram) meaning record Together we have an electric brain record or EEG. Thus, we have a record of brain wave activity using electrical contacts.

Schizophrenia (Schis-) means split (phren-) means mind. Individuals with this disorder suffer from delusions and hallucinations.

Thermoacidophiles (Therm-)means heat, (-acid) means acid (phil-) means love. Together we have heat and acid lovers.

Once you understand the commonly used prefixes and suffixes, obtuse words are a piece of cake! Let’s play a game to learn some common biology affixes!

TEST YOURSELF! Play the game below: don’t worry if you don’t know what the terms mean, just see if you can figure it out. Keep playing until you can score 10, 000 points! Biology Suffix Jewels Game

32 Common Biology suffixes Biology Suffixes from Latin

Here’s the list: 32 Biology Suffixes