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  • Hi, this is Kevin Patton I have another study tip for human anatomy and physiology. This

  • time it's regarding muscles and how muscle names can be a shortcut to learning the muscles,

  • where they're at, and what they do. You probably have been given a list by your instructor

  • as to what muscles you need to be able to identify or maybe it's a list that's In your

  • lab manual. In any case, once you look at all those muscle names, it looks like a lot

  • of gibberish, doesn't it? It look like it's written a foreign language. Well, you know

  • what? It is. Even English versions of these muscle names are derived from Latin. And that's

  • something that's very useful to know. You might think it's a hindrance, but actually

  • it's a help. Let's take a look at this group of muscles that are adductor muscles, that

  • is, they have the word adductor in their name. And, as you can imagine, these are muscles

  • that do adduction. That is, they adduct, in this case the femur, by bending the hip joint

  • and bringing the the leg toward the midline, or the median plane, of the body. Now the

  • first one we have shown there is in green and is called adductor magnus. Adductor means

  • it's an adductor muscle, of course, and magnus is the Latin word for great or large and you

  • can see it's a very large muscle. We can't really see the whole thing in this view because

  • there are a couple other muscles in the way. As a matter of fact, those muscles are adductor

  • muscles as well. For example, the one highlighted in yellow now is is adductor brevis and brevis

  • is a Latin word that means brief or short. And, as you can see, it is very short compared

  • to adductor magnus, isn't it?. When we look at the third one with adductor in its name,

  • and it's adductor longus and, well, as you can imagine, longus means long. And so it's

  • longer than brevis and of course magnus is really huge compared to all of them. So we

  • have three different abductor muscles all very close to one another. And so how do you

  • tell them apart? Well, their names! One is very big, one is short, and one is long. Now

  • one weird thing about Latin, you probably already noticed, is the words seem to the

  • words seem to be backwards in the phrase. Let's take a closer look at that. In English,

  • when we have a phrase like red wagon, in Latin it would be rendered as wagon red instead,

  • of course using Latin words, not English words. But this is to show the word order. So there

  • is a different word order these two languages. And so the modifier, which is the adjective,

  • in this case red, is modifying a noun. Which in this case is wagon. And so the modifier

  • comes after the term that it modifies in Latin, which is backwards from English. Let's look

  • at another example. Big red wagon. In Latin, that would be rendered as wagon red big. And

  • so the modifiers come after the terms being modified. So let's apply that to one of these

  • Latin names like, ooh, here's a long one: extensor carpi radialis brevis. That sounds

  • like a mouthful but it's really kind of a whole phrase or sentence in Latin. An extensor,

  • of course, is going to extend a part, that is, stretch it out. And carpi means of the

  • wrist. Remember carpal bones, or the wrist bones. Radialis in this case means pertaining

  • to, or near, or at the radius bone of the forearm. And then brevis, we already know,

  • means short. So if we put that all together and translate it into a good English word

  • order, it means the short wrist stretcher at the radius. Which tells you an awful lot

  • about that muscle: where to find it and what is does. Now there are some other names of

  • muscles that are not whole phrases but describe some aspect of the muscle. Like the gracilis

  • muscle shown here. We see it's a muscle that is a long slender muscle. And that's what

  • the term gracilis means is slender. So the gracilis muscle is the slender muscle. Another

  • mnemonic device that you might be able to use is graceful: it's a long slender graceful

  • muscle. Here's another one with kind of an odd name but, when translated into Latin,

  • make a lot of sense. The buccinator or BUK-sin-ay-ter muscle is a muscle of the cheek and it's called

  • the trumpeter muscle. And that's because when you are blowing a trumpet, you really need

  • to use this muscle to compress the air in your mouth and thus push it to and through

  • the trumpet. Now where are you gonna learn all this stuff? Maybe you haven't taken a

  • Latin class, probably haven't taken a Latin class, or two or three. And so, you know,

  • how are you gonna figure this out? Well, I suggest the Survival Guide for Anatomy and

  • Physiology. And if you use this little link here, you can type that into your browser

  • and get to a description of that book. And not only do I explain how to do this but I

  • give you some tables on how to do the translation. And a free resource that you can download

  • yourself is a this list of muscle names that you can download from my site at lionden.com

  • and so here's the URL for that. So type that your browser and you can download a couple

  • different versions of my muscle name list that has the translation of the name of at

  • least some of the major muscles, not ever muscle in the body. That, and other, study

  • tips are always available for you at my blog, which is found at theAPstudent.org

Hi, this is Kevin Patton I have another study tip for human anatomy and physiology. This

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