Dermato

Part of speech: prefix

Definitions

1. A prefix indicating a relation to the skin, commonly used in medical terminology
2. pertaining to the study or treatment of skin diseases
3. describing conditions, disorders, or treatments that specifically involve the dermatological system

Etymology: Dermato- is a combining form, a prefix used to build technical words, and it comes straight from Greek. The Greek noun "derma" meant "skin" or "hide," and it came from the verb "derein," meaning "to flay" or "to skin." So the prefix carries an old sense of stripping a hide off an animal, not just the idea of the skin as a surface. English did not inherit "derma" through everyday speech. It entered the language as a scientific building block, and the forms "dermato-" and "derm-" appear in medical and zoological terms coined in the 19th and 20th centuries. Words such as "dermatology" and "dermatitis" were assembled from these Greek pieces by European scientists, so the prefix is a modern construction on an ancient base.