Zdilla Matthew J
Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Laboratory Medicine (PALM), West Virginia University School of Medicine, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA.
Anat Sci Int. 2024 Sep;99(4):481-491. doi: 10.1007/s12565-024-00765-7. Epub 2024 Apr 8.
Relatively more-apparent body parts are often used to name relatively less-apparent body parts. To explore this etymological phenomenon, this report assesses anatomical terminology derived from some of the most apparent structures of the human body-hairs. Hair-related anatomical terminology involves varied etymons, roots, and derivatives: calvus "bald," cilia "eyelashes," glaber "hairless," pilus "hair," pubes (historically referring to the developing beard), pudendum "modesty" (referring to hair growth that covers genitalia), tempus "time" (referring to the location where hair commonly grays, thus showing a person's age), and tragus "goat" (referring to the tuft of hair that resembles the beard of a goat). Also including lanugo, vibrissae, hirci, flocculus, and cauda equina, a systematic review of Terminologia Anatomica and Terminologia Neuroanatomica revealed 285 unique non-duplicate hair-related terms. Several anatomical terms allude to particular age groups or sexes, but are used indiscriminately (e.g., tragus alludes to the older male ear, though may describe the fetal female ear). Likewise, human-centric anatomical terminology influences non-human anatomical terminology- a turtle has a "temporal bone" only because some humans develop gray hair on the sides of their heads as they age. Accordingly, etymological recursion is common: The human ear has a tragus, named after the goat, and the goat ear has a tragus, named after the human tragus, that was named after the goat. The use of Latin as the foundation of anatomical and medical terminology may appear seriously supercilious; however, it is often simply super silly. After all, hundreds of body parts are formally named after hair.
相对更明显的身体部位常被用来命名相对不太明显的身体部位。为探究这一词源学现象，本报告评估了源自人体一些最明显结构——毛发——的解剖学术语。与毛发相关的解剖学术语涉及多种词源、词根和派生词：calvus意为“光秃的”，cilia意为“睫毛”，glaber意为“无毛的”，pilus意为“毛发”，pubes（历史上指生长中的胡须），pudendum意为“私处”（指覆盖生殖器的毛发），tempus意为“时间”（指毛发通常变白的部位，从而显示人的年龄），以及tragus意为“山羊”（指类似山羊胡须的一簇毛发）。还包括胎毛、触须、 hirci、绒球和马尾，对《解剖学名词》和《神经解剖学名词》的系统回顾揭示了285个独特的、不重复的与毛发相关的术语。一些解剖学术语暗示特定的年龄组或性别，但使用时却不加区分（例如，tragus指老年男性的耳朵，不过也可描述胎儿女性的耳朵）。同样，以人类为中心构建的解剖学术语也影响着非人类的解剖学术语——乌龟有“颞骨”，仅仅是因为有些人随着年龄增长头部两侧会长出白发。因此，词源递归很常见：人类耳朵有个tragus，是以山羊命名的，而山羊耳朵也有个tragus，是以人类的tragus命名的，而人类的tragus又是以山羊命名的。将拉丁语作为解剖学和医学术语的基础可能显得极其傲慢；然而，这往往只是超级愚蠢而已。毕竟，数百个身体部位正式以毛发命名。
