Pediatric

How to spell pediatric

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce pediatric

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pediatric mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the branch of medicine that cares for infants, children, and adolescents.

Pediatric in a sentence

• The hospital opened a new pediatric ward for young patients.

• She trained for years before becoming a pediatric surgeon.

Where does pediatric come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from two Greek elements: pais (genitive paidos), meaning 'child', and iatros, meaning 'healer' or 'physician'. The medical specialty 'pediatrics' was coined in the second half of the 1800s, modelled on the older Greek combining form iatreia, the 'art of healing', so that the whole term literally describes the medicine of children. English took the term largely through the work of American and German physicians, and the American spelling clipped the original Greek diphthong, writing 'ped' where British usage keeps the fuller 'paed' (as in 'paediatric'). The same paid- root for 'child' also turns up in 'pedagogy', the leading of children in learning, and in 'orthopaedic', literally the straightening of children. Because the American form drops the silent 'a', the main spelling trap is simply remembering that this version begins 'ped', not 'paed'.

How the word is built

• ped- (child, from Greek pais/paidos)
• iatr (healer, from iatros: physician)
• -ic (adjective suffix)

British and American spelling

Pediatric is the American spelling. British English spells it paediatric.