Body Parts in Your Conlangs/Template

Template

Body

1. Blood vessel
   1. Artery
   2. Vein
2. Material of which it is composed
   1. Bone
   2. Gristle or cartilage (sp? cartilege?)
   3. Skin
   4. Muscle
   5. Fat
   6. Blood
3. Trunk (torso)
   1. Chest
      1. Heart
      2. Lung
   2. Abdomen or Belly
      1. Stomach
      2. Liver
      3. Spleen
      4. Intestines
   3. Waist
4. Neck
5. Extremity
   1. Head
      1. Hair
      2. Ear
         1. Earhole
         2. Earlobe?
      3. Eye
         1. Eyeball
            1. Iris
            2. Pupil
            3. Sclera
         2. Eyebrow
         3. Eyelid
            1. Eyelash
         4. Eye socket
         5. Tear gland
      4. Nose
         1. Nostril
      5. Mouth
         1. Jaw
            1. Maxilla (upper jaw)
            2. Mandible (lower jaw)
         2. Tooth
            1. Incisor
            2. Eyetooth or Canine Tooth
            3. Molar (and/or premolar?)
         3. Tongue
   2. Limb
      1. Arm
         1. Shoulder
         2. Elbow
         3. Wrist
         4. Humerus (upper arm)
         5. Lower Arm
         6. Hand
            1. Palm
      2. Leg
         1. Hip
            1. buttock (if different)
         2. Knee
         3. Ankle
         4. Thigh (upper leg)
         5. Shank (lower leg, between knee and ankle)
            1. Shin
            2. Calf
         6. Foot
            1. Sole
            2. Heel
            3. Ball
   3. Digit (toe or thumb or finger)
      1. Nail
         1. Fingernail
         2. Toenail
      2. Toe
         1. Pollex ("Great" Toe or Big Toe)
         2. Pinky toe or little toe
         3. Other individual toes?
      3. Thumb
         1. Thumbnail
      4. Finger
         1. Index finger
         2. Pinky finger
         3. Middle finger
         4. Ring finger
   4. My god, how could I have left out the genitalia?!?!
      1. female
         1. vagina
         2. womb
      2. male
         1. penis
         2. testicle
6. Side
   1. Back
   2. Front
   3. Left
   4. Right
   5. Bottom (lower)
   6. Top (upper)
7. Orifices
   1. anus
   2. urethral meatus?
   3. vagina was covered under "genitalia".
   4. mouth and nose and ear were covered under "head". So was "eye", but your conlang might not consider that an orifice.

Things to consider (Further Responses)

• Does your conlang, or do your conlangs, use any of these terms, or reduced forms of them, as affixes?
• Or as verbs or adjectives or prepositions or conjunctions or pronouns?

(I left out "adverbs" and "interjections". I assume the "interjections" part is "yes", because some of these are probably good curse-words. I can't think how to make one of these body-part nouns into an adverb, though.)

• What bodypart does your conculture think is the seat of life?

Popular answers are the liver (hence the name "liver") and the heart.

• What bodypart does your conculture think is the seat of emotion?

Popular answers are the stomach, the guts, and the heart.

• What bodypart does your conculture think is the seat of consciousness?

Popular answers are the eyes and the heart; but modern Western culture says "the brain".

Things included and things omitted on purpose, with author's reasons

I tried to leave out most things that were microscopic (like the Islets), and most things that were not visible on the surface (like the Islets).

(I also left out the Organ of Zuckerkandl, which resides in the arch of the aorta. Nobody seems to know what it's for.)

(And I left out the voicebox or larynx, and other parts of the speech system. Perhaps I should have included some of them. Others are welcome to, if they feel it would be good to do so.)

Bones and blood and stomachs-and-or-intestines and hearts and wombs, however, seemed like I should include them.

Blood is often visible on the surface, after a minor injury.

If bone is visible on the surface, a major injury has occurred; but one can detect the bone from the outside by touch.

Hearts move and make a sound detectable from the outside.

The same is true of the stomach-and-or-intestines; furthermore the owner of the stomach can often tell when it's empty, or when it wants to operate in reverse (the name of that sensation is "nausea").

Wombs have visible results; and their owners know what's going on in them. (Actually, I've been kicked awake by an unborn baby whose mother slept through the kick!)

As for livers and spleens and sweetbreads and so on: They are often referred to in old-fashioned conversations preceding the advent of modern medicine; I assume that the practice of butchery, together with those of surgery and veterinary and medicine, familiarized people with some of them. In some Native North American languages, for instance, an automobile's battery is referred to as its "liver".

It would be reasonable for some conlangs not to have all of these, and for others to have body-part terms in addition to these.