Megaly

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Abnormal enlargement of an organ or body part, as named by the combining form attached to a medical term
2. The condition of having an unusually enlarged organ or part of the body, often seen in medical diagnoses
3. A medical term for the abnormal growth or swelling of a particular organ, indicated by the suffix in its name

Etymology: "Megaly" is a medical suffix-form word built entirely from Greek parts: "megas" meaning "great" or "large," combined with the suffix "-aly" (from Greek "-alia," a noun-forming ending that appears in words for states or conditions). The result, "megaly," names the condition of an organ being abnormally enlarged. It is not a word that Greek physicians used; it is a modern coinage assembled from classical building blocks, following the same pattern as "cardiomegaly" (enlarged heart) and "hepatomegaly" (enlarged liver). In practice the word is almost always found as the second half of a compound, where the first element names the organ. That is the more useful way to see it: "splenomegaly" is enlargement of the spleen, "hepatomegaly" of the liver, and "cardiomegaly" of the heart. Doctors use these terms in diagnosis, and the bare form "megaly" appears mainly in dictionaries and in explanations of how such terms are built.