| The following list of over 11,000 word roots, with linking
vowels or consonants, pertain primarily to the life sciences. As with any
dictionary it is based on the usage of others, and comes from many sources.
During the past forty years roots were gathered as they caught my eye and
interest. The format of this list is based on that of Donald J. Borror (1960),
who together with DeLong authored a textbook on Entomology which was my
first serious introduction to the roots of technical terms and scientific
names. This interest was then further nurtured by John G. Franclemont, to
whom this dictionary is dedicated in recognition of his ninetieth birthday.
Click on the above alphabetical listing for the first letter of the desired root. Given that the format is the same as that of Borror (1960) and I cannot improve on his explanation of the notations, it is repeated as follows: "Every scientific term or name is composed of one or more word roots, between and following which may be one or more vowels or consonants. In the list of roots on the following pages, the connecting vowels and consonants that are most frequently encountered are indicated as variations in the roots. For example, the entry 'erythr, -o (G) - Red' indicates that the root is 'erythr' and the most commonly encountered connecting vowel is 'o', and the root may be found as 'erythr' or 'erythro'. The source language of each root is indicated by the abbreviation in parentheses (the root 'erythr' is from a Greek word). Roots preceded by a hyphen are suffices, or roots generally used at the end of a word; for example, '-idae' is the suffix that is added to the roots of generic names to form the names of families of animals, and '-pus' is the Greek root meaning 'foot' that is used at the end of a word (e.g. octopus). Roots proceeded by an equals sign may be used alone or as a terminal root; for example, '=buteo', from the Latin and meaning a 'kind of hawk', is used as Buteo, a genus of hawks; and in the name Archibuteo, another genus of hawks. Root variations preceded by an equals sign are variations usually used at the end of a word; for example, in the entry 'cephal, = a, -o', the '=a' indicates that 'cephala' is usually used at the end of a word (as in 'Acanthocephala', the phylum of spiny-headed worms, parasitic; also a genus of bugs that have a spine on the head). Similar English meanings are separated by commas, and dissimilar meanings by semicolons. Different English meanings of the same root may be due to the fact that the word from which the root comes has more than one meaning, or the root may be derived from more than one word in the source language; some roots may be derived from words in two source languages, and in such cases the source language is indicated in connection with each English equivalent." (Borror. 1960:1) Roots, as with all scientific names of organisms, are in italics, in recognition that they are of foreign origin. |