3. WORDHOOD: HOW A WORD CAN TAKE ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN

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

            You don't achieve wordhood by being put "in The Dictionary;" you achieve wordhood when one speaker of a language utters you and another speaker of that language understands what she means.  Much later, someone might for some reason or other "write you down" in some more or less official place and then eventually you might get noticed by a dictionary-maker who adds you into her newest edition--where eventually some pedant or scrabble-player (checking "to see if it is a real word") might find you.

            No, you achieve wordhood by useage....  The dictionary can only record evidence of past useage; it can't honestly describe the present; and it certainly can't "prescribe" (or proscribe!)  or predict the future.  The set of real words in any language is not bounded by considerations of time, if it comes to that; except in the case of so-called "dead" languages--and Medical Terminology, whatever else it may be is certainly not dead!

            These notions lead us to consider postulating a new way to think of whether or not a given word in Medical Terminology can be said to "exist" or "not exist," based entirely on whether it is "real enough" both to be created at need, and to be immediately understood, by anyone fully conversant with Medical Terminology as a whole.

            A useful observation at this point is that in many ways the complex words of Medical Terminology behave more like phrases (or even clauses and sentences) than they do like "normal" English (or even Latglish) words.  All linguists (at least since Chomsky's decades-old "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" woke everyone up) accept that the set of all the sentences of a given language includes not only every past sentence ever made and understood in that language, but also every present or future sentence that any native speaker makes, understands, or could make or understand.  This set is of course far too large for anyone to even dream of trying to list all its members.  Note, however, that the word "sentence" does impose constraints upon our set's membership.

            Can we postulate any constraints that would make it possible to begin to describe "the set of all real words in Medical Terminology?"

            A fairly obvious example might be that, where a word containing a combining form denoting a generic body part can be proven to have existed (we can find it "in The Dictionary!"), then any word formed by replacing that GENERIC combining form by one denoting a SPECIFIC item included in the generic category would seem to qualify.  For example,

if ARTHR-itis ("the inflammation of a joint") is a word, then so should be the following, in which specific joints are named by the "replacement" combining forms:

            ANCON-itis                  the inflammation of (the specific joint known as) the ELBOW

            COX-itis                       the inflammation of (the specific joint known as) the HIP

            GON-itis                      the inflammation of (the specific joint known as) the KNEE

            CARP-itis                     the inflammation of (the specific joint known as) the WRIST

            It needs to be repeated, that whether these words are "in the dictionary" or not is irrelevant.  Whether or not they have ever been or ever will be used is also irrelevant.  (If "here comes the bus" is a sentence in English, then so to is "here comes the furiously sleeping colorless green idea.")

            In fact, we could sum up what we are saying so far in a rule:

                        If generic ARTHR-itis is a a member of the set of all real words
                                    in Medical Terminology

                                    (where ARTHR- denotes "a joint" or "joints" in general),

                        then that set of real words also includes

                        all words x-itis

                                    such that "x" names a specific joint or joints.

           Other rules might follow by analogy.  For example, since any word of the form X-ectopia means "the displacement of x," we might postulate another rule:

                        If generic OSTE-ectopia is a real word

                                    (where OSTE- denotes "a bone" or "bones"),

                        then the set of all real words in Medical Terminology also includes

                        all words x-ectopia

                                    such that "x" names any one (or several) of the (more than two hundred)

                                    specific bones found in the human body.

            Note finally that, while the reality of the CONCEPT named by a specific word generated by one of our rules might be disputed by anatomists, or by logicians--or perhaps welcomed by surrealist painters--(what exactly would "the displacement of the skull" look like, anyway?), no such dispute calls into question the reality of the WORD itself.  The "validity" of the word--its "strength" or usefulness as the name of something in the real world--is another matter, which does not concern those of us engaged in learning the rules of Medical Terminology!

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