Medical Words & Quirks – Of Abdomens and Homer

This is the inaugural post in a series on medical terminology. Each week, I will share a term that I’ve discovered in Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary.

My aim is to unearth and share quirky words that surprise, teach, and inspire.

Even for those of you already steeped in the obscurities of medical vocabulary, I will share further treasures.

Abdomen, carinate – A boat-shaped abdomen

Was the person who conceived of this description a doctor who moonlighted as a naval architect? Did they work in an exam room with an ocean view? Otherwise, the nautical-abdominal association seems bizarre.

You are probably wondering exactly what part of the phrase refers to boats. Let’s dig deeper.

Carinate, adj. Furnished with a carina, n. or ridge; keeled.

Carinate, v. transitive. Zoology and Botany – To furnish with a carina, keel, or central ridge.

Carinated, adj. Keeled, ridged; also of pottery (cf. carination n.).

It’s natural to wonder about this specificity—we’re not just talking about boats, but specific parts of them: keels. Rather strange, no? Who would gaze into a patient’s abdomen and think “keels”? This is yet more evidence in support of my “part-time naval architect” hypothesis.

Let’s now consider some synonyms of our initial term. This will take us in a poetic direction.

Synonyms:

Navicular Abdomen, Scaphoid Abdomen

Navicular, adj. Of or relating to small ships or boats. Obsolete.

Navicular, adj. Boat-shaped, of a shrine or other object of veneration.

Also used in an extended sense, designating a god associated with such a shrine. Obsolete.

Scaphoid, adj. Shaped like a boat.

Shrines, gods, objects of veneration … can’t you just feel the poetry?

Venturing into the origins of all our terms will take us even deeper into the poetic realm.

Etymology:

Carinate: Adj. A borrowing from Latin – carīnātus.

Carinate: V. Latin carīnāt- participial stem of carīnāre, to furnish with a keel (or shell).

Navicular: A borrowing from Latin – navicularis. Classical Latin nāvicula, small ship. Post-classical Latin navicularis, boat-shaped; 5th cent. in the sense of ‘relating to sea voyages.’

Scaphoid: A borrowing from modern Latin scaphoīdēs, Greek σκαϕοειδής, σκάϕη (boat), see ‑oid suffix.

These word origins make me think of seashells strewn across a beach and small ships vaulting over monstrous waves on (epic) sea voyages. These images, in turn, conjure visions of Homeric epithets—e.g., swift ships traversing a wine-dark sea.

As you can see, medical vocabulary is hardly sterile. If you look under the hood, many terms crackle with deep meaning and beauty.

Bonus – here are two further gems:

Abdomen, pendulous – A relaxed condition of the abdominal wall, so that the anterior abdominal wall hangs over the pubis.

Abdomen, globose – Rounded with generalized distention and a variable quantity of fat, with or without flaccidity of the aponeurosis and muscle system.

What do all these terms make you think of?