The building blocks of English

Affixes

chondr(o)-

Also chrondri‑.

A cartilage; a grain.

Greek khondros, a grain or cartilage.

An example referring to cartilage is achondroplasia (Greek a‑, without; plasis, moulding), abnormal formation of cartilage leading to a type of dwarfism. Hypochondria, literally ‘below the cartilage (of the breast bone)’, came from the old belief that melancholy originated in the liver and associated organs (the medical term for abnormal anxiety about one's health is now hypochondriasis). The sense of a grain is found in chondrule, a spherical grain or nodule of silica embedded in a type of meteorite called a chondrite and in the class name for certain fossil seaweeds, Chondrus.