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List of ologies

Informally, an ology is a field of study or academic discipline ending in the suffix -ology. The word ology is therefore a back-formation from the names of these disciplines. Such words are formed from Greek or Latin roots with the terminal -logy derived from the Greek suffix -λογια (-logia), speaking, from λεγειν (legein), to speak. The word ology is thus misleading as the 'o' is actually part of the word stem that receives the -logy ending. For example, the bio part of biology stems from Greek βιος (bios), life. This is why some of the words do not end in -ology (such as mineralogy).

Not all words ending in -ology are ologies in the above sense. In some words such as tautology and haplology, the -logy suffix is from the Greek λογοσ, word, and denotes not a field of study but a type of speech or writing. For example, haplology means the mistake of saying one letter, syllable or word when two or more are required, as in the example of pronouncing the word "February" somewhat like "Febuary". Even 'technology' isn't a discipline as such, more a description of an improvement.

It should also be pointed out that some words mean to study something, but aren't called ologies -- midwifery is one example.

A famous British television commercial of the 1980s has a Jewish student phoning his grandmother to confirm his exam results. He is disappointed that he has only passed Sociology, but his grandmother will have none of it. "Anthony," she insists, "if you get an ology, you're a scientist!"

Here is a list of some ologies:

please add more examples of real fields of study ending with -ology to this list

Words ending in -ology that are not fields of study, and thus not "ologies" in the sense of this article, are:

See also:

External links

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump