trophic

The combining form -trophic is used like a suffix for a variety of meanings, including “having nutritional habits or requirements.” In other words, the sense of -trophic specifies how an organism gets its nutrition or how it feeds.

The combining form -trophic is also used as an adjective form of nouns ending with -troph or -trophy. In some cases, -trophic means “affecting the activity of, maintaining.” In this sense, it is often synonymous with -tropic.

The combining form -trophic is often used in scientific terms, especially in biology and anatomy. It comes from the Greek trophikós, meaning “pertaining to food.”

Corresponding forms of –trophic combined to the beginning of words are tropho- and troph-.

Want to know more? Read our Words That Use -troph, -trophy, tropho-, and troph- articles.

One term from biology that features -trophic is heterotrophic, meaning “capable of utilizing only organic materials as a source of food.” It is the adjective form of heterotroph.

The first part of the word, hetero-, means “different, other,” and -trophic, as we’ve seen, concerns what an organism needs for its food. So, heterotrophic has a literal sense of “other-feeding.”

Why? Put simply, heterotrophs, such as animals, require outside sources of nutrition whereas autotrophs, such as plants, can produce their own organic materials from inorganic materials (e.g., carbon dioxide).

In other, etymological words, heterotrophic organisms need “other food” because they can’t make any for themselves.

What are some words that use the combining form -trophic?

• angiotrophic
• autotrophic
• heterotrophic
• lymphotrophic
• metatrophic
• mycotrophic

Most plants are autotrophic, which means, as discussed above, they can produce their own organic materials for nutrition from inorganic substances. Think: photosynthesis.

The combining form auto- means “self” or “same.” With this in mind, what does autotrophic literally translate to?