Physiological

How to spell physiological

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce physiological

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does physiological mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the way living bodies and their organs normally function.

Physiological in a sentence

• The researchers measured the physiological response to extreme heat.

• Chronic stress can trigger real physiological changes such as raised blood pressure.

Where does physiological come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to two Greek roots: physis, meaning 'nature' or the natural workings of the body, and logos, meaning 'study', 'word', or 'account'. The Greeks combined these ideas into the notion of an account of the natural world, and Latin scholars later coined physiologia to mean natural science or the study of nature. By the sixteenth century English had borrowed 'physiology' to describe the science of how living bodies function, and the adjective 'physiological' followed soon after by adding the familiar -ical ending. The same physis root sits inside 'physics' and 'physical', while the logos root powers a vast family of words ending in -logy, from biology to psychology. The spelling trap lives in that unstressed middle, where the 'physio' and the 'logical' parts blur together, and writers often forget exactly where the vowels fall.

How the word is built

• physio- (from Greek physis: nature, the body)
• -log- (from logos: study, account)
• -ical (adjective suffix)