The building blocks of English

Affixes

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.