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prettygoodwordteratoid (TER-uh-toid) - adj., resembling a monster; (med.) of, resembling, or being a teratoma, a tumor made up of a heterogeneous mixture of tissues.
I'll omit illustrating that last sense, but teratomas can include skin, hair, and muscle as constituents -- they seem particularly associated with gonads. In any case, it was the first sense that caught my attention. The root of the terato- prefix is from Ancient Greek téras, meaning wonder/omen/portent/monster, the last sense being the operative one in English, while -oid itself, an adjectival suffix meaning resembling, is from Latin -oīdēs, in turn from Ancient Greek -o-eidḗs, where the -o- part is actually part of the stem and the -eidḗs is the suffix, from eîdos, form/likeness.
---L.
I'll omit illustrating that last sense, but teratomas can include skin, hair, and muscle as constituents -- they seem particularly associated with gonads. In any case, it was the first sense that caught my attention. The root of the terato- prefix is from Ancient Greek téras, meaning wonder/omen/portent/monster, the last sense being the operative one in English, while -oid itself, an adjectival suffix meaning resembling, is from Latin -oīdēs, in turn from Ancient Greek -o-eidḗs, where the -o- part is actually part of the stem and the -eidḗs is the suffix, from eîdos, form/likeness.
---L.
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Date: 2025-08-11 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-11 03:42 pm (UTC)yikes 😬
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Date: 2025-08-11 09:30 pm (UTC)