The

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

'' -ology'' is commonly used in the English language to denote a field of study. The ''ology'' ending is a combination of the letter ''o'' plus '' logy'' in which the letter ''o'' is used as an interconsonantal letter which, for

phonological Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often prefer ...

reasons, precedes the

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

suffix '' logy''. ''Logy'' is a

in the English language, used with words originally adapted from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

ending in (''-logia''). English names for fields of study are usually created by taking a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

(the subject of the study) and appending the suffix ''logy'' to it with the interconsonantal ''o'' placed in between (with an exception explained below). For example, the word

dermatology Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the Human skin, skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A List of dermatologists, ...

comes from the root ''dermato'' plus ''logy''. Sometimes, an excrescence, the addition of a consonant, must be added to avoid poor construction of words. There are additional uses for the suffix, such as to describe a subject rather than the study of it (e.g., duology). The suffix is often humorously appended to other English words to create nonce words. For example, ''stupidology'' would refer to the study of stupidity; ''beerology'' would refer to the study of beer. Not all scientific studies are suffixed with ''ology''. When the root word ends with the letter "L" or a vowel, exceptions occur. For example, the study of

mammals A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle e ...

would take the root word ''mammal'' and append ''ology'' to it, resulting in ''mammalology'', but because of its final letter being an "L", it instead creates '' mammalogy''. There are also exceptions to this exception. For example, the word angelology with the root word ''angel'', ends in an "L" but is not spelled ''angelogy'' according to the "L" rule. The terminal ''-logy'' is used to denote a discipline. These terms often utilize the suffix ''-logist'' or ''-ologist'' to describe one who studies the topic. In this case, the suffix ''ology'' would be replaced with ''ologist''. For example, one who studies ''

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

'' is called a ''

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

''. This list of words contains all words that end in ''ology''. It addition to words that denote a field of study, it also includes words that do not denote a field of study for clarity, indicated in orange.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Z

See also

Notes

References

External links