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Fascinating language pedantry.


I don't think it's pedantry. It's the same as some doctor coming to you with the words "The Internet is not working".


> It's the same as some doctor coming to you with the words "The Internet is not working".

The medical equivalent of that would be a patient coming in with "doc, I've go a pain", and when the MD asks where, they answer "I'm not sure". Which happens. In both cases, the professionals need to figure out what the underlying problem is, despite being given unhelpful information.

Now, as far as "The Anatomy of X" is concerned, that's somewhat of an overloaded expression. In this context, we generally do expect to not only get structural but also functional information.

If you expect human language to always follow pre-defined conventions, you're just setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary grief. Language and the meaning conveyed by it are naturally subject to context variations, drift, re-appropriations, and a whole slew of other transformations.

But even linguistically, "The Anatomy of X" is a victimless crime. I guarantee you that not one reader here clicked on the article and went "oh my, I sure was hoping they'd just print out the structs involved and left it at that".

Anatomy is a word overloaded by context in a way Physiology is not. If the article was named "The Physiology of a System Call", that does invoke a medical context where none was expected.


The strict distinction between "anatomy" and "physiology" in medicine, with the former not including description of function but only structure, is also fairly recent, with older texts frequently using "anatomy" in a broader sense of "let's look inside and see what parts this has and what they do". The borrowing of that sense for the non-medical context happened before usage in medicine became more technical and specific, so more recent developments in medical jargon haven't changed the more generally understood meaning of the English word.

In any case, it's an established English word with a well-understood non-medical meaning that goes back really far in this sense, at least to the early 17th century, with John Donne's An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1622).


Interesting, didn't know this usage is so old. I (non-native) thought that it's some hipster programmer talk.


Strictly speaking it means dissection (to chop up or cut into I would more colloquially put it), which is appropriate in this case.

(Finally getting some use out of those years of Greek class!)




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