gastr/o means stomach (from the Greek word gaster).
What does gastr/o mean?
Gastr/o is a combining form (a word root) used in medical terms to mean the stomach. It comes from the Greek word gaster, meaning stomach or belly. When you see gastr/o in a medical term, it is pointing to the stomach.
As a medical term building block, gastr/o joins with other roots, prefixes, and suffixes to form many words. For example, gastritis means inflammation of the stomach, gastrectomy means surgical removal of part or all of the stomach, and gastroenteritis means inflammation of the stomach and intestines. Once you know that gastr/o means stomach, you can work out the meaning of these longer words from their other parts.
Gastr/o is a root (a combining form), not a prefix. It usually sits at or near the start of a word and carries the core meaning of the term. This is why some people search for it as a prefix, even though it is technically a root.
Gastr/o is one of the most common roots in medical terminology, because stomach and digestive terms come up so often. It pairs naturally with the intestine root enter/o and the colon root col/o, and with suffixes such as -itis (inflammation) and -ectomy (removal).
Example words using gastr/o
Related word parts
enter/o · col/o · hepat/o · -itis · -ectomy