The names of bodies, disease and the ways people tried to understand them.
anatomy (n.)
Anatomy is the study of the structure of the body. The Greek anatomē, from which it comes, meant dissection, literally a cutting up.1
The same Greek root for cutting is in atom. Greek atomos meant indivisible, that which cannot be cut. Anatomy names the cutting of a body into its parts; an atom was named as something that could not be cut at all.12
In older English, an anatomy was also heard as an atomy, and atomy became a word of its own for a skeleton, or for a person thin enough to look like one.3
Anatomy can now mean the body’s structure itself, and it can be used for the detailed examination of other things.1
The students studied the anatomy of the hand.