Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Cranium
/ˈkreɪniəm/noun
The part of the skull that encloses the brain.
The Greek roots
κρανίον
kraníon
skull
Literally: “skull”
Follow a root:κρανίον2 words
The story of the word
Medieval Latin took kraníon straight from Greek medical writing, where it named the bony box and left the jaw out. Anatomists still keep that line: the cranium is eight bones, the face is another fourteen. Migraine hides the same word, hēmikranía, pain in half the skull.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cranialmigrainecraniotomy
In a sentence
The scan showed a hairline fracture at the base of the cranium.