Intended for healthcare professionals

Fillers When I use a word …

An/atomy

BMJ 2000; 321 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7266.953 (Published 14 October 2000) Cite this as: BMJ 2000;321:953
  1. Jeff Aronson, clinical pharmacologist
  1. Oxford

    As I have mentioned before (BMJ 1999;319:1758), at one time the indefinite articles “a” and “an” were joined to the words that they governed—for example, aman or anoke. When the words were later split again, some spurious words were formed in error—for example, instead of a naranj we have an orange and instead of a noumpere we have an umpire. This process is called metanalysis, one casualty of which was “anatomy.”

    Anatomy is from the Greek άνέ (ana, up) and τέµνω (temno, I cut). In addition to its current meaning, the study of the structures of the body …

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