steno-
Small; constricted.
[Greek stenos, narrow.]
This combining form appears in stenography and its relatives, for the process of writing in shorthand. Stenosis is the abnormal narrowing of a passage in the body. In ecology, stenohaline (Greek halinos, of salt) refers to an organism able to tolerate only a narrow range of salinity, stenothermal to one that can tolerate only a small range of temperature, and stenotopic to one able to exist in only a restricted range of habitats or ecological conditions; all can be contrasted with terms in eury-.
Visit Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words site for 2000+ articles on English!
Copyright © Michael Quinion 2008–. All rights reserved. Page last updated 23 September 2008.
Your comments and suggestions on the site are very welcome.