Physiology

How to spell physiology

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce physiology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does physiology mean?

1. nounThe branch of biology concerned with how the bodies of living organisms and their parts function.

Physiology in a sentence

• The medical course devotes a full term to human physiology.

• Her research in plant physiology examines how roots absorb water.

Where does physiology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek physiologia, which combined physis, meaning 'nature' or the inborn working of a living thing, with logia, meaning 'the study of' or 'discourse about'. To the early Greeks the term meant something close to natural philosophy, an inquiry into how the natural world behaves. Latin scholars carried the word forward as physiologia, and it entered English in the 1500s, at first in that broad sense of natural science. Over the following centuries its meaning narrowed to its modern focus: the study of how the bodies of living organisms function, as distinct from anatomy, which describes their structure. The same physis root still hides inside the everyday word 'physical', and recognising that 'physio' chunk at the front, followed by the familiar '-ology' ending, is the easiest way to keep the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• physio- (from Greek physis: nature, the natural workings of a living thing)
• -logy (from Greek logia: the study of)