 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "-logy" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
-logy is asuffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted fromAncient Greek ending in-λογία (-logía).[1] The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French-logie, which was in turn inherited from theLatin-logia.[2]The suffix became productive in English from the 18th century, allowing the formation of new terms with no Latin or Greek precedent.
The English suffix has two separate main senses, reflecting two sources of the-λογία suffix in Greek:[3]
Philology is an exception: while its meaning is closer to the first sense, the etymology of the word is similar to the second sense.[8]
In English names for fields of study, the suffix-logy is most frequently found preceded by the euphonic connective vowelo so that the word ends in-ology.[9] In these Greek words, theroot is always a noun and-o- is thecombining vowel for all declensions of Greek nouns. However, when new names for fields of study are coined in modern English, the formations ending in-logy almost always add an-o-, except when the root word ends in an "l" or a vowel, as in these exceptions:[10]analogy,dekalogy,disanalogy,genealogy,genethlialogy,hexalogy;herbalogy (a variant ofherbology),mammalogy,mineralogy,paralogy,petralogy (a variant ofpetrology);elogy;heptalogy;antilogy,festilogy;trilogy,tetralogy,pentalogy;palillogy,pyroballogy;dyslogy;eulogy; andbrachylogy.[7] Linguists sometimes jokingly refer tohaplology ashaplogy (subjecting the wordhaplology to the process of haplology itself).
Permetonymy, words ending in-logy are sometimes used to describe a subject rather than the study of it (e.g.,technology). This usage is particularly widespread in medicine; for example,pathology is often used simply to refer to "the disease" itself (e.g., "We haven't found the pathology yet") rather than "the study of a disease".
Books, journals, and treatises about a subject also often bear the name of this subject (e.g., the scientific journalEcology).
When appended to other English words, the suffix can also be used humorously to createnonce words (e.g.,beerology as "the study of beer"). As with otherclassical compounds, adding the suffix to an initial word-stem derived from Greek orLatin may be used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigor to humble pursuits, as incosmetology ("the study of beauty treatment") orcynology ("the study of dog training").
The -logy or -ology suffix is commonly used to indicate finite series of art works like books or movies. For paintings, the "tych" suffix is more common (e.g.diptych,triptych). Examples include:
Further terms like duology (two, mostly ingenre fiction) quadrilogy (four) and octalogy (eight) have been coined but are rarely used: for a series of 10, sometimes "decalog" is used (e.g. in theVirgin Decalog) instead of "decalogy".
