Onychium

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The skin fold surrounding the base of a fingernail or toenail where the nail emerges
2. The area of skin that overlaps the nail at its base, helping to protect the new nail as it grows
3. The tissue bordering the nail plate at its root, providing growth support and protection

Etymology: The "onychium" comes from New Latin, a language of scientific naming used by European scholars from the Renaissance into modern times, so it was coined deliberately rather than inherited from ancient speech. Its building blocks are plainly visible: "onych-" is taken from the Greek "onyx," which meant both "claw" or "fingernail" and the banded gemstone, and "-ium" is the Latin neuter suffix that scientists favoured for naming body parts and anatomical structures. Put together, the pieces describe the tissue as a sort of nail-related structure, which is exactly what anatomists needed when they had to name a part with no existing English term. The word therefore carries the Greek sense of "nail" inside a Latin-style ending, a pattern common to many anatomical terms.

Synonyms: nail