Anatomy

Pronunciation

• IPA: /əˈnætÉ™mi/

Origin

From French anatomie, from Latin anatomia, from Ancient Greek ἀνατομία, from ἀνατομή (anatome, "dissection"), from ἀνά (ana, "up") + τέμνω (temnō, "I cut, incise") (surface analysis - + tomy + -), literally “cut up”.

Full definition of anatomy

Noun

1. The art of studying the different parts of any organized body, to discover their situation, structure, and economy; dissection.
2. The science that deals with the form and structure of organic bodies; anatomical structure or organization.
• John DrydenLet the muscles be well inserted and bound together, according to the knowledge of them which is given us by anatomy.
3. Animal anatomy is also called zomy or zootomy; vegetable anatomy, phytotomy; and human anatomy, anthropotomy.
4. A treatise or book on anatomy.
5. The act of dividing anything, corporeal or intellectual, for the purpose of examining its parts; analysis; as, the anatomy of a discourse.
6. (colloquial) The form of an individual, particularly a person, used in a tongue in cheek manner, as might be a term used by a medical professional, but in a markedly a less formal context, in which a touch of irony becomes apparent.
   "I went to the Venice beach body building competition and noticed the competitor from Athen, and boy oh boy lemme tell ya, that's what a call classic Greek anatomy."
7. (archaic) A skeleton, or dead body.
• 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 68:So did the Ægyptians, who in the middest of their banquetings, and in the full of their greatest cheere, caused the anatomie of a dead man to be brought before them, as a memorandum and warning to their guests.
8. The physical or functional organization of an organism, or part of it.
• 2013-08-03, The machine of a new soul, The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.

Derived terms