trophy

The combining form -trophy is used like a suffix variously meaning “nourishment, feeding, growth.” It is also used to form nouns corresponding to adjectives ending in -trophic. The combining -trophy is often used in medical and scientific terms.

The form -trophy comes from the Greek trophḗ, meaning “nourishment,” “food.”

You may be familiar with terms like atrophy (equivalent to the Greek átrophos) from the Greek and dystrophy (from the New Latin dystrophia). Find out how these relate to -trophy and “nourishment” at our entries for these words.

Corresponding forms of –trophy combined to the beginning of words are tropho- and troph-. Another form closely related to -trophy is -troph.

One example of a word that uses the form -trophy is hypotrophy. Hypotrophy is “progressive degeneration of an organ or tissue caused by loss of cells.”

The first part of the word is hypo-, which you might recognize from words like hypodermic. It means “under.” And as we’ve seen, -trophy means “nourishment.” Hypotrophy, then, has a literal sense of “being under-nourished.”

What are some words that use the combining form –trophy?

• abiotrophy
• lipotrophy
• hypertrophy
• metratrophy
• myotrophy
• neurotrophy

What are some other forms that -trophy may be commonly confused with?

• trop-
• tropo-

The word trophy, as you might get for winning a competition, doesn’t share the same root as -trophy despite having the same letters. The prized trophy is actually related to the combining forms tropo- and trop- as well the word trope. Learn more at our entries for the words.

The combining form myo- means “muscle.” With this in mind, myotrophy involves nourishment of what parts of the body?