Orthopedic

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈɔɹθəpidɪk/

Definitions

1. Pertaining to the medical field focused on diagnosing and treating conditions affecting the bones, joints, and muscles
2. Relating to the specialty that addresses deformities and injuries of the skeletal structure and surrounding tissues
3. Concerning the branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the bones, joints, and muscles

Etymology: Orthopedic is built from two Greek elements. "Orthos" meant "straight" or "correct," and "pais" meant "child." The link runs through "paideia," the Greek idea of raising and educating a child, which was a major concern in Greek culture. Greek had a further extension, "paideuo," meaning "to train or educate," and from that family came the sense of rearing a young body properly. The first half of the story is the surprise. The word for a child's upbringing ended up attached to the correction of bodily deformity, and that association was made deliberately in modern times. The term was coined in French as "orthopédie" and later reached English as a borrowing of the adjective "orthopédique." The root "orthos" sits behind a family of words in English such as "orthodox" and "orthography," all built on the idea of correctness. The English adjective therefore describes something related to correcting straightness in the body, rather than to the child itself. The Greek elements combine into a name for the medical specialty that treats bones, joints and muscles, a field that grew out of the effort to straighten and correct the limbs of young patients.

Synonyms: bone-related, skeletal