haemat-

Haemat- is a combining form used like a prefix meaning “blood.” It is used in many medical terms, especially in pathology.

Haemat- comes from the Greek haîma, meaning “blood.”

Chiefly used in British English, haemat- is a variant of hemat-, itself a variant of hemato- before a vowel. Hemato- is another form of hemo-.

Want to know more? Read our Words That Use hemat-, hemato-, and hemo- articles. 

Historically, haemat- has been written as hæmat-, featuring a ligature of the a and e.

Other variants of haemat- used like hemo- are hem- and hema-. As with haemat-, all of these combining forms are often spelled with an additional a in British English, as in haem-, haema-, haemo-, and haemato-.

Also closely related to haemat- are -aemia, -emia, -haemia, and -hemia, which are combined to the ends of words to denote blood conditions.

You can learn all about the specific applications for each of these forms at our Words That Use articles for them.

One example of a medical term you may have encountered that features the combining form haemat- is haematoma, “a circumscribed collection of blood, usually clotted, in a tissue or organ, caused by a break in a blood vessel.”

The first part of the word, haemat-, means “blood.” The suffix -oma is used to name tumors or other abnormal growth. So, a haematoma has a literal sense of “abnormal swelling of blood.”

What are some words that use the combining form haemat-?

• haematein
• haematemesis
• haematic
• haematin
• haematosis

What are some other forms that haemat- may be commonly confused with?

• chaeto-
• chemi–
• chemo-
• chromat-
• hemangio-
• hemi-
• homo-
• homeo-
• stomat-

The suffix -oid means “resembling, like.” With that in mind, what does haematoid mean?