April 08, 2016

Just a strange thought

Isn't it interesting that we have common words for the two parts of our legs (thigh, shin) but don't have for the two sections of our arms? We have to refer to them as upper arm and lower arm.

We could use humerus for the upper arm, but there are two bones in the lower arm so we can't really use either radius or ulna.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Engineer's Disease at 02:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 There's "forearm" for the lower arm. If you want a single word for the upper arm, though, you probably need to go to Latin and use "brachium."

Posted by: Don at April 08, 2016 04:44 PM (IJe0X)

2 How about "aftarm"?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 08, 2016 07:30 PM (KiM/Y)

3 They're "guns", plural (as in, "welcome to the gun show" /flex).  I've never heard of one upper arm referred to as a "gun", singular, though. 

I suppose this lack of terminology comes from sports reporting?  Most of the time when you hear about a part of a limb, it's in reference to some athlete who injured one. And for whatever reason, upper-arm injuries always get divided into "biceps" and "triceps" injuries.

And wikipedia says the anatomical term "arm" refers to the part from the shoulder to the elbow (I did not know that), so the technically-correct terms really are just "arm" and "forearm".  Silly "common usage" getting in the way. The engineer in me does like the obvious choice of "aftarm", though...

Posted by: Mikeski at April 08, 2016 08:03 PM (BKBr8)

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