Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots

There is something about word origins that seems to make the meaning of a word take hold in the memory and imagination. Digging down into the primal root of language can feel like discovering some kind of a secret truth. Librarians should be familiar with the visitor who will not be satisfied with a definition that does not include some explanation of how a word came to have its meaning; they are the reason that we have etymological dictionaries.

Unfortunately, many of the medical dictionaries available through online reference databases do not provide information on word origins. This includes familiar...