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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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carcino-

Cancer.

[Greek karkinos, crab or ulcerous sore.]

The Greek word is said to have been applied to cancerous tumours because the swollen veins around them resembled the limbs of a crab. A carcinogen (Greek genēs, born) is a substance capable of causing cancer in living tissue; a carcinoma is a cancer arising in the epithelial tissue of the skin or of the lining of the internal organs; carcinogenesis is the initiation of cancer formation.

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