Pathology

How to spell pathology

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce pathology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pathology mean?

1. nounThe branch of medicine concerned with the causes and effects of disease, especially through examining tissue and body fluids.
2. nounThe specific abnormalities or disease processes present in a person or tissue sample.

Pathology in a sentence

• The hospital sent the biopsy to the pathology department for analysis.

• The scan revealed no obvious pathology in the patient's lungs.

• She specialised in forensic pathology after finishing medical school.

• The report described the underlying pathology behind her symptoms.

Where does pathology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from two Greek elements. The first is pathos, which literally meant 'suffering', 'feeling', or 'experience', the same root that gives English 'sympathy' (feeling with someone) and 'pathetic'. The second is logia, 'the study of', from logos meaning 'word' or 'reasoning', the familiar ending behind 'biology' and 'geology'. The compound was assembled in the seventeenth century, partly through Latin and French scientific vocabulary, to mean the systematic study of disease and the changes it produces in the body. Over time it broadened to name not only the medical science but the disease processes themselves, so a report can describe 'the pathology' found in a tissue sample. The connecting 'o' that joins path- to -logy is the usual Greek linking vowel, and remembering the pathos root helps fix that single 'o' rather than the doubled letters writers sometimes guess at.

How the word is built

• path- (from Greek pathos: suffering, disease)
• -o- (connecting vowel)
• -logy (from logia: study of)