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 titles like The American Heritage Medical Dictionary, Black’s Medical Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary. Western medical education is intertwined with Greek and Latin terminology. Many preferred technical terms exhibit Greek and origins, allowing students who have had the benefit of a classical education to intuit word meanings. Students without such an educational background are left to catch as catch can; quality reference materials that note word origins can benefit these students greatly.
Horace Gerald Danner’s A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots would fill a crucial role in supplying information on word origins for collections that lack an etymological medical dictionary like a Dictionary of Medical Derivations (Casselman, 1998), or Medical Meanings (Haubrich, 1997). Even for collections with such an etymological medical dictionary, A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots may still be recommended by its exhaustive scope and singular purpose of defining medical word roots and placing them in context. Each entry in the thesaurus lists dozens of examples in four categories that Danner calls “simple root”, “prefixed root”, “leading root compound” and “trailing root compound”. Many of these examples – and many of the entries themselves – will not be found in medical dictionaries such as those listed above. It is surprising that not all of those dictionaries contain entries for a term like, edema, whereas A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots includes such examples as angioedema and edematigenous.
While A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots deserves praise for a thorough coverage of its subject, its organizational features may leave something to be desired by particular users. A thumb index would have been useful or, if that were cost prohibitive, a table of contents that gives some indication of the page ranges of the alphabetically organized sections would have added some convenience. The table layouts can seem cluttered, particularly the examples column that contains four categories of headings for different types of examples. On the other hand, the English to Roots index, included as the first of three appendices, is an excellent feature. The other two appendices cover prefixes and suffixes and facilitate a quick look-up of these common elements, although many are listed with more extensive examples in the thesaurus itself.
The organizational structure of A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots is not transparent and may be intimidating to some users, but users who invest the small amount of time required to learn to use the thesaurus will benefit from access to an extensive resource for learning the origins, meanings and variations of medical word roots that are essential for expressive and learning potential in medicine. A Thesaurus of Medical Word Roots is recommended for collections supporting students studying to become medical practitioners: doctors, nurses, dentists, veterinarians and medical technicians. It may also find a place in collections for disciplines with clinical or academic interest in medical terminology such as social work, public health, psychology or anthropology. In addition, librarians selecting for general reference should not overlook the utility of this thesaurus for satisfying users seeking information about word origins that are not included in many medical dictionaries.
