Anatomical and Medical Prefixes and Suffixes

Author: Carolyn Perry MSc, PhD • Reviewer: Dimitrios Mytilinaios MD, PhD
Last reviewed: June 21, 2022
Reading time: 12 minutes

Subclavian artery

Arteria subclavia

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Learning anatomy for the first time can sometimes feel like learning a new language. Students often not only have a large amount of content to learn, but also struggle to make meaning of the language associated with that content. The wonderful thing about this language however, is that in many cases, the names of anatomy related content are incredibly helpful if you just understand that often the words can be broken down into different parts that have meanings. For example, the subclavian artery. The name tells you of its location and hints also at the path of this blood vessel. Sub – meaning below, clavian – relating to the collarbone or in anatomical terms, the clavicle. Another example, arthr – meaning joint, and itis – meaning inflammation. There are numerous examples like these!

Often parts of a word that have different meanings will be linked together. For example, brachioradialis, a muscle in the arm, can be broken down into two parts that have meaning, and a linking vowel, in this case ‘o’. Brachi meaning arm, and radialis referring to one of the bones in the forearm, the radius. The linking vowel is most commonly ‘o’, but other vowels may also be used to link parts of a word together.
 
To make learning this language easier, this article takes some of the more commonly used prefixes and suffixes, puts them into categories and then provides the meaning, and examples. For instance, in the previous two examples, ‘sub’ would be found in the location-related category, and ‘arthr’ would be found in the body region-related category. Within each category, the prefixes will be listed in alphabetical order.