Elimination of the apposition in Latin anatomical terms.

The anatomical nomenclature rules require that terms be as short and simple as possible. One common exception to that rule is Latin terms that contain two nouns in nominative case, for example, Musculus masseter and Os ischium. Although these may appear to speakers of other languages to be compound nouns, they are appositions, grammatical structures in which one noun renames, defines or describes the entity named by the other noun. More than 125 terms in Terminologia Anatomica can be simplified, without loss of clarity, by prohibiting use of more than one noun in nominative case in Latin anatomical terms (e.g., Masseter and Os ischii). Clin. Anat. 30:156-158, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.