Neurology

How to spell neurology

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce neurology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does neurology mean?

1. nounThe branch of medicine and science concerned with the nervous system and its disorders.

Neurology in a sentence

• After the seizure, her doctor referred her to a specialist in neurology.

• He spent four years training in neurology before joining the hospital.

Where does neurology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from two Greek elements. The first is neuron, which originally meant 'sinew' or 'cord' before it came to mean 'nerve' as anatomists learned what those fibres actually were. The second is the familiar combining form -logia, from logos, meaning 'word', 'reason', or 'study of'. The compound was coined in the seventeenth century, with English picking it up in the 1680s to name the scientific study of the nerves and the nervous system. The same neuron root still drives modern coinages such as 'neuron' itself and 'neurotransmitter', so spelling the opening neuro- correctly anchors a whole family of words. The trap in writing it is the smooth -ology ending, where the unstressed vowels blur and the single L is easy to second-guess.

How the word is built

• neuro- (from Greek neuron: nerve)
• -logy (from logos: study, account)