Medical Terms

[coolheaded]

Hello all.

I want to ask why are medical terms hard to know? I mean some medical terms are different from normal English that I know though both refer to the same meaning. For example, analgesics ( which is a medical term ) means pain killer. Also, Do native speakers find difficulty in reading medical terms ?


Thanks in advance.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello all.

I want to ask why are medical terms hard to know? I mean some medical terms are different from normal English that I know though both refer to the same meaning. For example, analgesics ( which is a medical term ) means pain killer. Also, Do native speakers find difficulty in reading medical terms ?


Thanks in advance.

It depends. Some medical terms are in everyday use. I don't think many people (that I know) would have much problem in understanding that analgesics are painkillers, but I'm sure there are some other terms that don't translate quite so easily.

 

[bertietheblue]

Hello all.

I want to ask why are medical terms hard to know? I mean some medical terms are different from normal English that I know though both refer to the same meaning. For example, analgesics ( which is a medical term ) means pain killer. Also, Do native speakers find difficulty in reading medical terms ?


Thanks in advance.

Many medical terms come from Greek and are often made by combining word elements (notably prefixes and sufixes) of Greek origin. One reason we use them is that they are widely understood in other languages, in particular those other European languages that are derived from Greek and Latin.

Many ordinary people, myself included, often do not know what the terms mean, but there is an easy way to get to grips with them: simply learn the meanings of the most common prefixes (especially for the body parts if you are a medical student) and suffixes - there aren't that many - and you will be able to have an intelligent guess about the meaning of most medical terms.

 

[coolheaded]

Thank you so much Sir emsr2d2 for answering me.

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Many medical terms come from Greek and are often made by combining word elements (notably prefixes and sufixes) of Greek origin. One reason we use them is that they are widely understood in other languages, in particular those other European languages that are derived from Greek and Latin.

Many ordinary people, myself included, often do not know what the terms mean, but there is an easy way to get to grips with them: simply learn the meanings of the most common prefixes (especially for the body parts if you are a medical student) and suffixes - there aren't that many - and you will be able to have an intelligent guess about the meaning of most medical terms.

Thank you so much for your advice. By the way, I also read that Medicine and Science use Latin becuase it is a dead language so the meaning of a word is unlikely to change over time . makes sense right ?

 

[bertietheblue]

Thank you so much Sir emsr2d2 for answering me.

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Thank you so much for your advice. By the way, I also read that Medicine and Science use Latin becuase it is a dead language so the meaning of a word is unlikely to change over time . makes sense right ?

Never thought of that but, yeah, sounds convincing to me.