Cardiac

How to spell cardiac

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cardiac

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cardiac mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the heart or to disorders of the heart.

Cardiac in a sentence

• The paramedics treated him for a suspected cardiac arrest.

• The hospital opened a new cardiac care unit last spring.

Where does cardiac come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek kardia, which simply meant 'heart'. From that root the Greeks formed kardiakos, an adjective describing anything to do with the heart, and the Romans took it over as the Latin cardiacus. English adopted it in the late Middle Ages, originally in a medical sense, and the spelling has kept the Greek-flavoured -iac ending throughout. The same kardia root underlies a whole family of modern medical terms, including cardiology, cardiogram, and tachycardia, so recognising 'cardi' as 'heart' is the key to spelling the lot. The trap for writers is the unstressed final syllable, which sounds like a plain '-ack' but is written -iac, with the i that the Greek root demands.

How the word is built

• cardi- (from Greek kardia: heart)
• -ac (adjective suffix: relating to)