A large part of beginning the study of anatomy and physiology is learning the specialised words that are used. This new terminology may seem daunting, but the

challenge lies in its unfamiliarity rather than its difficulty of comprehension. You

must expect to encounter a lot of new words and be prepared to learn them over the

course of your study. Most of the words contain information as the words are constructed with a prefix and a suffix or a stem that identifies the word as referring to a

specific part of anatomy or physiology. Many anatomical and physiological terms

are in fact descriptions. For example, extensor carpi radialis longus refers to a muscle that extends the hand at the wrist (the carpals), lies over the radius bone and is

the longer of two muscles. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) refers to a molecule that

contains units of a ribose sugar with an oxygen atom removed, attached to a base to

form a nucleoside and also attached to a phosphoric acid. This sometimes makes the

words rather long or unusual.

You should know what the anatomical position of the body is and in what direction the transverse, sagittal and coronal planes of the body lie. Directional terms

such as proximal/distal, deep/superficial, superior/inferior, lateral/medial, anterior/

posterior and caudal/cephalic allow the location of one anatomical feature to be

placed relative to another. The dorsal and ventral body cavities are located on different sides of the body and contain different organs. For ease of communication, the

abdomen is divided into nine regions: right hypochondriac, epigastric, left hypochondriac, right lumbar, umbilical, left lumbar, right inguinal, hypogastric (or

pubic) and left inguinal regions. Furthermore, you should be aware that superficial

anatomical landmarks are referred to by regional names such as popliteal, calcaneal,

cephalic, axillary, acromial, etc. You should know the difference between physiology and anatomy and the definitions of metabolism, anabolism and catabolism.