chiro-comb. form

= Greek χειρο- combining form of χείρ hand, appearing in Greek in a very large number of words; several of these were adopted in Latin with the spelling chiro-, e.g. chīrographum, chīromantia, chīronomia, chīrothēca, chīrūrgia, and have thus passed into the modern languages; many more have been taken by these directly from Greek, e.g. chirocracy, chiroscopy, chirosophy, chirotechny, or formed from Greek elements and on Greek analogies, as chiropodist, chirosopher. In modern technical terms, esp. those of botany and zoology, the spelling is often cheir-, e.g. cheiranthus, cheiroptera, cheirotherium. The more important of these derivatives follow in their alphabetical order; a few trivial ones are given here:In words thoroughly naturalized in Latin, CH was treated as C, and had in Romanic the phonetic history of c before i: hence such medieval Latin forms as cirographum, cirogryllus, cirotheca, ciromancia, cirurgianus, also written cyro-, and Italian and Old French and English forms in ciro-, cyro-. But, in most words, modern scholarship has restored the ch- spelling and k pronunciation: see however chirurgeon n., surgeon n.