The

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

ology is commonly used in the English language to denote a field of study. The ''ology'' ending is a combination of the letter ''o'' plus ''

logy ''-logy'' is a suffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted from Ancient Greek ending in ('). The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French '' -logie'', which was in turn inherited from the Latin ''-logi ...

'' in which the letter ''o'' is used as an interconsonantal letter which, for phonological reasons, precedes the

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

suffix ''

''. ''Logy'' is a

in the English language, used with words originally adapted from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

ending in (''-logia''). English names for fields of study are usually created by taking a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

(the subject of the study) and appending the suffix ''logy'' to it with the interconsonantal ''o'' placed in between (with an exception explained below). For example, the word

dermatology Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A dermatologist is a specialist medica ...

comes from the root ''dermato'' plus ''logy''. Sometimes, an excrescence, the addition of a consonant, must be added to avoid poor construction of words. There are additional uses for the suffix such as to describe a subject rather than the study of it (e.g.

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

). The suffix is often humorously appended to other English words to create nonce words. For example, ''stupidology'' would refer to the study of stupidity; ''beerology'' would refer to the study of beer. Not all scientific studies are suffixed with ''ology''. When the root word ends with the letter "L" or a vowel, exceptions occur. For example, the study of mammals would take the root word ''mammal'' and append ''ology'' to it resulting in ''mammalology'' but because of its final letter being an "L", it instead creates ''

mammalogy In zoology, mammalogy is the study of mammals – a class of vertebrates with characteristics such as homeothermic metabolism, fur, four-chambered hearts, and complex nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part ...

''. There are exceptions for this exception too. For example, the word angelology with the root word ''angel'', ends in an "L" but is not spelt ''angelogy'' as according to the "L" rule. The terminal ''-logy'' is used to denote a discipline. These terms often utilize the suffix ''-logist'' or ''-ologist'' to describe one who studies the topic. In this case, the suffix ''ology'' would be replaced with ''ologist''. For example, one who studies ''

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

'' is called a ''

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...

''. This list of words contains all words that end in ''ology''. It includes words that denote a field of study and those that do not, as well as common misspelled words which do not end in ''ology'' but are often written as such.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Z

See also

Notes

References

External links