Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Somatic
/soʊˈmætɪk/adjective
Belonging to the body rather than to the mind, or to the body's ordinary cells rather than its reproductive ones.
The Greek roots
σῶμα
sōma
body
Literally: “of the body”
Follow a root:σῶμα5 words
The story of the word
In Homer σῶμα is a corpse; later Greek widened it to the living body. English medicine took the adjective to mark off the bodily from the mental, which is why a somatic complaint is the one a psychiatrist has ruled out. Biology then borrowed it for a second split: somatic cells are everything that is not a germ cell, so they die with you.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
psychosomaticchromosomesomatotypesomatostatin
In a sentence
The clinic ruled out somatic causes before referring her to a psychiatrist.