Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Hyoid
/ˈhaɪɔɪd/adjective
Relating to the U-shaped bone in the throat that anchors the tongue.
The Greek roots
ὗ
hŷ
the letter upsilon
εἶδος
eîdos
form, shape
Literally: “upsilon shaped”
The story of the word
Named for a letter: the bone is shaped like an upsilon, so ὑοειδής, upsilon-like. It is the only bone in the body that articulates with no other bone, slung in the neck by muscle alone, which is why a fractured hyoid is read at autopsy as a sign of strangling. Deltoid and rhomboid come from the same anatomical habit of naming a thing after the figure it resembles.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
upsilondeltoidrhomboid
In a sentence
Speech therapy focused on the muscles that pull the hyoid forward.