2. THE OSSIFICATION OF SOMETHING INSIDE A BONE?

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2017; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

            Recently we learned that one of our favorite test-words, endo-osteotic, is actually not found out there in the real world--it is not found "in the wild."  This observation is potentially alarming--it could be used to cast doubt upon our whole project.  After all, if we can't guarantee that the words we use in our exercises and for testing are REAL, then what guarantee do our students have that we are not teaching them something about as useful as Advanced Klingon?

            The good news of course is that (Klingon or no Klingon) we are not trying to teach our students whole words and their definitions at all.  What we are trying to do is something just a little different: to teach you how to translate ANY word you find out there ("real" or "unreal"), based on your knowledge of their very real combining forms and the (equally real) rules that govern their combinations.  Thus, in all our course materials (the main textbook, a Workbook, Online Exercises, Videos, and--yes--examinations), you will typically not find any given whole word used more than once.  To repeat, we are in the business of teaching WORD-PARTS, and PREDICTABLE COMBINATIONS, not whole words.

            For example, our students should have not have seen the whole word endo-oste-ot-ic until the exam; what they will have seen before the exam--and carefully learned, by all kinds of instruction and practice--are the WORD PARTS -endo-, -oste-, -ot- and -ic-, as well as the rules that govern how you translate words that contain parts LIKE them in the ORDER they are found in here; our students would therefore generate the following correct translation: "pertaining to an abnormal condition involving something inside a bone."

            So, have I distracted you from the tiny detail here, that our word is not "real?"  Let's look at all the related words found in a large Medical Dictionary.  We present them below, along with our translations and comments.

WORDS FOUND           TRANSLATIONS by Our Method,

"in the Dictionary"                WITH COMMENTS

en-ost-osis                  an abnormal condition involving something inside a bone

                                                ("something inside a bone" is called "the endosteum")

                                    No other words beginning en-ost- are found; but the following

                                    sequence is:

end-oste-al                  p.t. something inside a bone (called the "endosteum")

end-oste-itis                the inflammation of something inside a bone ("endosteum")

end-oste-oma              a tumor involving something inside a bone ("endosteum")

end-oste-um                something inside a bone

end-ost-itis                  (see) endosteitis

end-ost-oma                (see) endosteoma

                                    Therefore, since the Dictionary's preferred form for -ost- is in two cases

                                    -ostE-, the word

en-ost-osis                  is probably a sloppy coinage, probably recent, an ERROR in fact for a

                                    more plausible word like

                                    *en-ostE-osis

                                    (the asterisk "*" indicates that a word is not found in the Dictionary);

                                    but since we have only one word with en- against six with end-, then an

                                    even more plausible target word for the concept would have been

                                    *enD-ostE-osis

                                    Now, since the adjective for any word x-os-is is x-otic (just as the

                                    adjective for any x-itis is x-itic, and for any x-oma it is x-omatous),

                                    then the adjective for our "more plausible" word is

                                    *enD-ostE-ot-ic

                                    Finally, strict adherence to the rule about prefixes ending in vowels

                                    (that such a prefix generally keeps that vowel; cf hypo-orchidia and

                                    thousands of other examples; note antE- "before" vs antI- "against"),

                                    generates

                                    *enDO-ostE-otic         (which is, of course, our "unreal" test word!).

            One final note.  Any student using our text, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology, would have also learned early (in Chapter 3) that ostE- (along with both ossE- and oss-, but NOT ost- reliably means "bone," while any word of the form x-ost-osis (with no "E") equally reliably means "THE OSSIFICATION OF x."  Thus our students, unprepared for a badly-constructed word, would try to translate en-ost-osis as "the ossification of something inside something" (and would mutter against their teachers).  But no one can be "prepared for" badly-constructed words, of course; which is why responsible coiners of medical words have historically taken this sort of thing into account when making them.

            Out of all this emerges a conclusion, a hypothesis, and a proposal:

1) we conclude that enostosis is a badly-formed word, because

            a) it doesn't follow the well-established pattern set by endosteum and the rest, and

            b) it is confuseable with the completely different, but also well-established pattern

            symbolized by x-ostosis;

2) we hypothesize that it is a relatively recent word, coined well after the "Golden Age of Medical Terminology;"

3) we herewith humbly propose (to the Esteemed--but, fortunately, imaginary--Members of the Committee for the Supervision of Medical Terminology) that the word enostosis be purged, and that endo-osteosis (or, to be consistent, and therefore better!) endosteosis be enshrined as its replacement.

            Klingon, anyone?

                                                                        - o -