Some SIgnificant "Ologies"

One of the ways to learn our Greek and Latin roots, but primarily our Greek roots, is to learn all the "ologies." Once we have an "ology" we know we have an "ologist," and we also have the phenomenon without the ending, which is what the "oologist" studies. Often, however, that thing is a much more simple word. For example, campanology is the study of bells; a campanologist studies it, and the bells are the things studied. An ornithologist studies ornithology, the subject of which is birds.

We can of course go further. If we want to kill the thing we put the ending of "cide" instead of "ology." A "pesticide" kills "pests." A "parricide" kills parents. If we want to implore the gods with it we use the ending "mancy." If we want to fight with it, we give it the ending "machy." And so forth. So we have the word alectryomancy to mean the divination about the future by observing the way roosters pick up grain. More technically, a person is supposed to distribute grain on the various letters of the alphabet and then observe which grains the cock eats. The rooster is thus a sort of ouija board, isn't it? I do this all the time, of course, to make all my important decisions in life (By the way, both the OED and the Unabridged have alectromancy as an alternate spelling, and there are four times as many Google occurrences of alectromancy).

There are various online lists of various "ologies." Here is a good example, with about 110 "ologies." The list is woefully incomplete, and many of the "ologies" I list below are not on it. For example, the list has none of the theology "ologies," including theology, soteriology, ponerology, harmatiology, pisteology, etc. The thing I really love about "ologies," however, is that everyone believes in them and knows a few. If I go down to get a pedicure, which I also regularly do, I can talk to the most inarticulate worker but she will know she is a student of cosmetology. Every third grader has heard the word psychology. Thus, when we move into more difficult "ologies," people are willing to grant not simply the existence of these fields but also the importance of them.

My "Ten" Ologies

Here are a few I would introduce to supplement the linked list. We have palynology, first coined in 1944, which is "the branch of science that deals with the structure and dispersal of pollen grains and other spores." I tried my humor with this word in Billphorism # 343. Since the Greek verb behind this means "to scatter," we don't have many words in English that have been formed off this root, even though palynology has fully caught on at the university level. Then we have andragogy, a word that doesn't appear in the OED (probably because it was coined by an America educator Malcolm Knowles (1913-1997)), but it is in the Unabridged as a new word in the 1993 edition. It is the study of adult learning. I suppose people felt before the 1970s that only kids learn. That kind of attitude contributes to the notion that no one learns, because if just kids learn they will catch on sooner rather than later that adults have given up on the process and they, too, will tune out.

We also have pteridology, a term coined in the mid-19th century meaning the study of ferns. I think that if one just worked through the OED article on "pterido-" words one would really learn a lot about Greek roots. A pteridography describes the ferns; the pteridologist is the one versed in the study of ferns; pteridomania is enthusiasm for ferns (possessed by, I am sure, at least a dozen people in the world); pteridophilism/ist, regarding a love of ferns; pteridophyte, a member of the Pteridophyta, which is the Linnaean term for the division of plants including "ferns and their allies." I suppose they need allies when the bogs rise up to attack them.

More "Ologies"

Then we have cetology, which is the study of whales. Interestingly enough, Herman Melville coined the term. Ctetology is not the study of whales by a person who stutters; rather it is a branch of biology dealing with the origin and development of acquired characters, whatever that really means. I have never met such a person, and relative paucity of attestations of it on Google and its absence from every dictionary I consulted except the Unabridged leads me to believe that the word really hasn't caught on. But bryology, derived from the Greek "bruon," a kind of mossy sea-weed, is certainly here to stay. It is the study of mosses, liverworts and hornworts. Some eager students from the University of British Columbia have put some information and pictures of bryophytes on the web. Then we have siphonapterology, which is quite a mouthful. There are only a few attestations of it on the net, and it is the branch of entomology dealing with the study of fleas. But the only Google search "results" for the word are when kids misspell it in spelling bees--hardly the stuff of heady scientific knowledge. But the reason that someone thinks we should have siphonapterology is that there is a genus of fleas calld the siphonaptera, and I suppose someone has to study them. Indeed, maybe the only way you can get people to immerse themselves in this boring subject is to give them a really sophisticated-sounding profession. By the way, the word is derived from the Greek "siphon," meaning "tube" and "apteron," meaning "wingless." Such, my friends, are the fleas--wingless tubes. I wonder if this is an insult word that they toss against each other--"Well, you just are a wingless tube, anyway," they say.

Finishing Up

Myrmecology is the study of ants, and mycology is the scientific study of fungi. I seem to recall, however, that I had a friend about two decades ago who wanted to study mushrooms, and she fancied herself a mycologist in training. As I was wandering in the OED, I ran across mycoplasmology, which has something to do with fungi in living organisms. Telmatology is the study of bogs, ferns, marshes and swamps, while phycology is the study of algae and seaweed. Then we have culicidology, which is the study of gnats. Interestingly enough, the OED only has culiciform, something that is "gnat-shaped," culicicide, something to kill those buggers, and culicifuge, something that sends them fleeing. Thus, an insect repellent may be called a culicifuge. The Unabridged doesn't have most of these words, and when it has one, it shortens it. Thus, it has culicide rather than culicicide. When the Unabridged kills them, it doesn't even want to waste its breath on them. I wonder if most culicidologists are "gnattily attired"? Let's finish this essay with a whimper, and make reference to acarology, which is the study of mites and ticks. Many of these words are based on the Linnaean classification names of the living things they study; those essays will come in good time.

2571