-ology, -logy, -ologist, -logist
(Greek: a suffix meaning: to talk, to speak; a branch of knowledge; any science or academic field that ends in -ology which is a variant of -logy; a person who speaks in a certain manner; someone who deals with certain topics or subjects)
The word -ology is a back-formation from the names of certain disciplines. The -logy element basically means "the study of ____". 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 suffix -ology is considered to be misleading sometimes as when the "o" is actually part of the word stem that receives the -logy ending; such as, bio + logy.
Through the years -ology and -logy have come to mean, "study of" or "science of" and either of these suffixes often utilize the form of -ologist, "one who (whatever the preceding element refers to)".
The examples shown in this unit represent just a small fraction of the many words that exist in various dictionaries.
2. Someone who practices in the profession of balneotherapy.
2. The use of hot spring mineral water for healing or therapeutic purposes.
This is considered to be the oldest historic use of natural geothermal waters.
2. The study of the doctrines of the Bible or the study and the doctrines derived from it.
2. A subdiscipline of biology that integrates the concepts of human biology with those of anthropological archaeology: In bioarchaeology, one might isolate and amplify DNA from very old bones, such as from the frozen body of the 9,000-year-old "Ice Man" who was found in the Italian Alps.
2. The study of communities of organisms and of the relationship among the members of such communities.