Actually -otomy isn't even -otomy... it's -tomy. For example Craniotomy. Cranio-tomy.
cranio = κρανίο (skull)
tomy = τομή (cut)
And -tomy is just a cut, not cut a hole. To cut a hole you'd have to remove a part. Most of the cuts are straight lines and then the skin just opens up like a hole because of stretching.
Then, -ostomy is -stomy. Nephrostomy. Nephro-stomy.
Nephro = Νεφρό (Kidney)
Stomy = Στόμιο (something that has the shape of a mouth)
Finding equivalent idioms in different languages is one of the most fun things to do with LLMs.
One of the tricky parts, if you plan to actually use the idioms, is that they very greatly between different regions that use the same language. Particularly tricky with Spanish, considering so many countries on so many different continents use it. I haven't found LLMs to be good at knowing what regions use any given expression.
But we use a country name in the sentence: "That seems Spanish to me" (Das kommt mir spanisch vor) although that would 'translate' to "That seems fishy to me"
Greek physician from a family of Greek physicians confirms this. :)
Let me just add, that in the Western Medicine many words from anatomy come from Latin and many words from physiology/pathology come from Greek. Of course the Greeks themselves have their own words for anatomy as well.
I didn’t realise so many of these medical terms were Greek rather than Latin. Interesting!
Are these terms still used as-is in modern Greek? Much like how translating names of French dishes removes some of the air of sophistication, I feel like being told one is to receive a ‘skull cut’ sounds somewhat more scary than the (to an English speaker) academic-sounding ‘craniotomy’.
Amusingly, the word anatomy (“dissection”) is from Greek via Latin, from the very same root that we’re discussing here.
Other English terms from the Greek root for “cut”: tomography (imaging through a lot of cross-sections); entomology (study of in-sects, critters with sect-ions in their bodies); dichotomy (division into two possibilities); atom (that which cannot be divided).
“Up” or “thoroughly”, apparently? Same prefix as in analysis, anaphora, anamorphism. Ancient Greek had a sprawling system of prefixes that one can’t really pick up by osmosis, it seems.
(Complaints about noun morphology sound a bit hypocritical from a native speaker of Russian, I know, but it is what it is.)
cranio = κρανίο (skull) tomy = τομή (cut)
And -tomy is just a cut, not cut a hole. To cut a hole you'd have to remove a part. Most of the cuts are straight lines and then the skin just opens up like a hole because of stretching.
Then, -ostomy is -stomy. Nephrostomy. Nephro-stomy.
Nephro = Νεφρό (Kidney) Stomy = Στόμιο (something that has the shape of a mouth)
-ectomy is correct...
Resource: I'm Greek in a family of 4 doctors.