![]() ![]() A cardiologist is one who studies the heart, that is, a heart doctor, one who is intimately familiar with the myo cardial infarction, or cardiac arrest, or heart attack, in which the cardiac muscle, or muscle of the heart, stops. CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, has to do with reviving an unconscious and unbreathing/unheartbeating (yes, a thorough misuse of the English language, but boy was it fun!) patient via techiques for getting the lungs (pulmonary derives from the Latin pulmo, pulmonis-lung: yes, we have already found an exception to the rule stated above the Greek word for lung is pneumon-lung ). We can note as we head on into these medical terms that the Greek letter kappa (k) becomes a hard "c" in English. So, although the Latin root cor, cordis is a prolific provider of vocabulary for the English language, it does not contribute much to the medical field, but rather its related rival, the Greek root kardia, does: Greek vocabulary, especially when it comes to parts of the body, plays a larger role in medical terminology, such as anatomy, than their semantic counterparts in the Latin language. View my complete profileĪfter having fully discussed the Latin root cor, cordis: "heart" last week in honor of Valentine's Day, and illustrating the large number of English vocabulary words that derive from that powerful Latin root, I shall now leap into a Greek root for a change. in English I earned from the University of Virginia I currently teach Latin and Greek and Roman mythology at Tandem Friends School in Charlottesville, VA, farm organically, am Executive Editor of, and practice yoga and dhyana on a daily basis (qigong when clement!). (hon) degree in English I received from UW Madison, and continued with the M.A. My own love for reading and subsequent keen interest in English vocabulary began with the B.A. Other than intense reading itself, there is no better way of learning and, most importantly, remembering English vocabulary words than by learning Greek and Latin root words. Learning a vast array of English vocabulary words can help people write more powerfully, speak clearly and confidently, and read with a much deeper appreciation for great literature, not to mention perform well on college and graduate school entrance examinations, such as the SAT and GRE. I have long been fascinated by Greek and Roman mythology, and the Greek and Latin roots of English vocabulary words their infusion within the English language respectively forms the core of cultural literacy and English vocabulary.
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