Hyster

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A combining form from Greek used in medical terms to mean the womb or uterus, as in hysterectomy
2. A prefix drawn from Greek that refers to the uterus, found in words such as hysteria and hysterectomy
3. A Greek-derived element in medical vocabulary signifying the womb, appearing in terms related to the uterus

Etymology: Ancient Greek physicians believed many women's ailments originated in the womb, which they called "hystera". Plato's "Timaeus" describes the womb as an animal that wanders through the body when it goes unfulfilled, pressing on the lungs and causing breathlessness and fits. From the adjective "hysterikos", meaning "of the womb", English took "hysteric" and "hysteria", labels that kept the idea of a disorder rooted in the uterus long after anatomists abandoned it. The same Greek root supplies a second, unrelated-seeming sense. "Hysteros" meant "later" or "behind", and it gives us the combining form "hyster-" in "hysteresis", the lagging of an effect behind its cause, a term from physics. Greek rhetoricians also named "hysteron proteron", a figure of speech that puts the later thing first, from the same word.