Anatomical

How to spell anatomical

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce anatomical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does anatomical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the bodily structure of humans, animals, or plants.

Anatomical in a sentence

• The textbook included a detailed anatomical diagram of the heart.

• The surgeon explained the anatomical differences between the two patients.

Where does anatomical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek anatomia, meaning 'dissection' or literally 'a cutting up'. It was built from ana, which meant 'up' or 'apart', and the verb temnein, 'to cut', so the original picture is of cutting a body apart to study what lies inside. The Greeks formed the related adjective anatomikos, which passed into Latin as anatomicus before reaching English in the late 1500s, when the study of the human body through dissection was flourishing in European universities. The same temnein root that gives us the 'tom' in anatomical also sits inside 'atom' (originally something that cannot be cut) and the surgical suffix '-tomy' as in appendectomy. Remembering that hidden 'tom' meaning 'cut' helps explain the spelling, since the middle of the word is anaTOMical, not anatonical.

How the word is built

• ana- (up, apart)
• tom (cut)
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)