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Medicine & BodyGreekEnglish

Skeleton

The bony framework of the body.

The Greek roots

σκελετός
skeletós
dried up

Literally: a dried-up body

The story of the word

A skeletós was a 'dried-up' mummy or corpse — the word narrowed to the dry bones that remain.

The same roots elsewhere

Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.

In a sentence

The skeleton of a whale hung from the ceiling.

Built on the same root

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