My WHAT is called WHAT?
Written by Aric Schroeder, Former Student on Tuesday, January 26, 2016
The human body consists of 206 bones, 640 skeletal muscles, and 78 organs. It would appear that they ran out of names for these body parts after 10, so they started getting creative. Some of them may even be humorous.
People have come up with terms for parts of the body to simplify the fact that science anoints body parts with unnecessarily sophisticated names. Man boobs, or ‘moobs’ is a term people have come up when with when a male’s chest has developed breast like a woman. The real name for this condition is called gynecomastia, which occurs when men have an influx of estrogen in their system.
The bellybutton, a term accepted by everyone, is actually called the navel. Like a navel orange. Bellybutton orange.
The axilla, more commonly referred to as the ‘armpit’, is the human underarm.
The spleen, is the organ in the human body that filters blood.
The gluteus maximus is an interesting term. It is also known as the buttocks, which is also interesting.
“I think it’s funny,” said SHS junior Keiara Windom. “Why...would [your butt] be [called] Maximus?"
Both the pinky toe and the pinky finger are called the minimus. Probably referring to their size.
If the second toe is longer than the big toe, it is referred to as Morton’s toe.
The human tail bone is called the coccyx.
The throat seems to be a place for peculiarly named body parts. This is the home of the esophagus, uvula, and tonsils.
If you think fingers are too boring of a term, phalanges is pretty fun to say.
“Yeah I think that fingers are probably boring to say,” said SHS junior Adriana Jones.
And the human jaw is also called the mandible.
These examples are just the tip of all the strangely named body parts.
