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[14] Etymologically, anatomy means ‘cutting up’ (the Greek noun anatomíā was compounded from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the base *tom-, which figures in several English surgical terms, such as tonsillectomy [19], as well as in atom and tome), and when it first came into English it meant literally ‘dissection’ as well as ‘science of bodily structure’. From the 16th century to the early 19th century it was also used for ‘skeleton’, and in this sense it was often misanalysed as an atomy, as if the initial anwere the indefinite article: ‘My bones … will be taken up smooth, and white, and bare as an atomy’, Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote 1755.
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