Intro

Med­ical and sci­en­tific words are all messed up. I mean, they are log­i­cal and orga­nized, but nei­ther effi­cient to learn nor easy to under­stand for nor­mal peo­ple. How­ever, what can we the nor­mal peo­ple do? Unfor­tu­nately, the answer is ‘just mem­o­rize and memorize.’

BUT!, we have to thank that the old peo­ples were smart enough that they made the words sys­tem­i­cally. Thus, the words have their own mean­ings and can be placed with dif­fer­ent word roots, the direc­tion or object of the mean­ing stays the same. In fact, some of the words are eas­ily rec­og­nized by know­ing sim­ple pre­fixes and word roots. There­fore, it is more con­ve­nient and effi­cient to mem­o­rize the pre­fixes, word roots, and suf­fixes than just mem­o­riz­ing the terms that are eas­ily forgettable.

Word Roots

This is it. First, this is where you can find the main idea or the sub­ject of the word. Another words, it is a cen­ter of the word that has the fun­da­men­tal mean­ing of it. How­ever, if this was every­thing, the mem­o­riza­tion would be very easy. Thus, there are two dif­fer­ent lan­guages that orig­i­nate from; the Latin used mostly to describe the anatom­i­cal struc­tures and the Greek describes the con­di­tion, disease, or treat­ment or etc.

• Ex.#1 
  • Hepat (Gr) - ‘liver’ - the word ‘hepat’ is orig­i­nated from the Greek word hepar which meanse liver.
    • Hepat  +  –itis (inflammation) — the word hepati­tis means inflam­ma­tion of the stomach
    • Hepat  +  –oma (tumor) - the word hepatoma means tumor of the liver
•  Ex.#2
  • Cutane (L) — ‘skin’ - the word ‘cutane’ is orig­i­nated from the Latin word cutis which means skin.
    • Sub– (under)  +  cutane  +  -ous (per­tain­ing to) — the word sub­cu­ta­neous means under the skin

   *‘Ex.#1′ show that the word hepat describes the con­di­tion or dis­ease of the liver which is orig­i­nated from Greek lan­guage. 

   *‘Ex.#2′ show that the word cutane describes the anatom­i­cal posi­tion of the skin which is orig­i­nated from Latin language.

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Pre­fix

Although the word root has the core mean­ing of the word, it does not direct or describe other than itself. Thus, the pre­fix which usu­ally indi­cates time, direc­tion, num­ber, or posi­tion, is added to the begin­ning of the word. Now, the word can have its own description.

• Ex.#3
  •  Hyper– - ‘exces­sive, above normal’ 
    • Hyper– + therm (heat) + -ia (condition) — the word hyper­ther­mia means con­di­tion of exces­sive heat 

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Suf­fix

Finally, the the word pre­fects with an end­ing called suf­fix. Suf­fixis placed at the end of the word, and itt usu­ally indi­cates a con­di­tion, dis­ease, or part of speech. 

• Ex.#4
  • –cyte — ‘cell’
    • Ery­thro– (red) + -cyte — the word ery­thro­cyte means red blood cell

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3 Effi­cient Ways to Mem­o­rize Med­ical Terminologies

As I said, every­one needs to study. Thus, there are many dif­fer­ent ways to study because all of us have dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties. So I am pre­sent­ing eas­ier and more effi­cient ways to study.

1. Flash Cards — Flash cards might be one of the most effi­cient and fastest way to mem­o­rize vocabularies. Simply because they encour­age you to mem­o­rize words.  

How­ever, some peo­ple worry about 2 or 3 dol­lors because they have to buy them. Some peo­ple just don’t like cut­ting papers into smaller pieces. Some peo­ple hate writ­ing hun­dreds of words on the flash cards, and some, can’t even rec­og­nize their own writ­ings. All these prob­lems, you can solve it at once with what you are using it right now. Yes, your com­puter is not just there for you to only read and watch ‘youtube’s. Uti­lize it.

More­over, there are sev­eral web­sites that pro­vide users to down­load, copy and paste flash cards, so there are tons of ways to make flash­cards. How­ever, make sure those are free because I know that most peo­ple like free stuff.

• Go to ‘How to make Flash Cards using Microsoft Office Word?’ — How2
• Go to ‘Free Flash Cards Websites’ — Go to ‘How to make Flash Cards using Microsoft Office Word?’

     * Be care­ful not to posi­tion dif­fer­ent words and mean­ings on each side of the paper.

• Go to ‘How to mem­o­rize vocab­u­lar­ies using flash cards?’ — How2

2. Record your voice and lis­ten - Lis­ten­ing is also another way to mem­o­rize the definition. However, do not just hear some­thing, but lis­ten to the voice and con­ce­trate it. In fact, hear­ing might not give you the result at once, but if you lis­ten every­day, fre­quently and reg­u­larly, then it can be one of the strongest device of mem­o­riz­ing. Such tech­nique is used in every­day life, espe­cially in adver­tis­ing. If you know the results and effects of adver­tise­ments, you will under­stand how lis­ten­ing affects you.

3. Draw a pic­ture in your mind- Mem­o­riza­tion at the end relates to the real­ity. Mean­ing, the word has to match what really exist in the real world whether it’s a thing, the­ory, or even thoguths or etc. Try to draw a pic­ture in your mind, a verycom­pli­cated one, so that when you see the word you can rec­og­nize it at once. Yet, it takes time. You may for­get many words at first; how­ever, if it set­tles in your mind, it will give you the answer for you MCAT test. lol

• Go to ‘How to mem­o­rize words by think­ing about the word?’ — How2

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Con­clu­sion

Mem­o­riza­tion is crit­i­cal in under­stand­ing med­ical ter­mi­nolo­gies. It is bet­ter to know first how to mem­o­rize effi­ciently because study­ing is war against time. Thus, ‘How to mem­o­rize med­ical ter­mi­nol­ogy; pre­fix, word roots, and suf­fix’ gives you brief expla­na­tions about wor­d­roots, pre­fix, and suf­fix and some ways to mem­o­rize things effi­ciently. Uti­lize those infor­ma­tion and max­i­mize your ability.

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