Pediatrics

How to spell pediatrics

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce pediatrics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pediatrics mean?

1. nounThe branch of medicine concerned with the health and medical care of infants, children, and adolescents.

Pediatrics in a sentence

• After her residency she specialized in pediatrics at the children's hospital.

• The medical school added a new lecture series on pediatrics for first-year students.

Where does pediatrics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern scientific coinage assembled from two ancient Greek roots: pais (genitive paidos), meaning 'child', and iatros, meaning 'healer' or 'physician', the same iatr- element found in 'psychiatry' and 'podiatry'. The word was put together in the second half of the nineteenth century to name the new medical branch devoted to the care of children, with the ending -ics marking it as a body of study, as in 'physics' and 'mathematics'. In British usage the same word kept the Greek diphthong as 'paediatrics', preserving the 'ae' of paidos, but North American spelling simplified that vowel to a single 'e', giving 'pediatrics'. The 'ped' here means 'child' and should not be confused with the Latin ped- meaning 'foot' (as in 'pedal' and 'pedestrian'), which is a wholly separate root. Knowing that the core is paid, 'child', plus iatros, 'healer', explains why the word centres on the 'iatr' spelling rather than any 'iatric' guesswork.

How the word is built

• pedi- (from Greek pais, paidos: child)
• iatr- (from iatros: healer, physician)
• -ics (field of study)

British and American spelling

Pediatrics is the American spelling. British English spells it paediatrics.