megal-

Megal- is a combining form used like a prefix meaning “large, great, grand, abnormally large.” It is used in a few scientific and medical terms.

Megal- ultimately comes from the Greek mégas, meaning “great, large.”

Megal- is a variant of the much more common megalo-, which loses its -o– when combined with words or word elements beginning with vowels.

Want to know more? Read our Words That Use megalo- article.

Another familiar variant of megal- is mega-, as in megaphone or megabyte. Mega- is also used as a unit of measure prefix to indicate a fact of one million (e.g., megahertz). Corresponding forms of megalo- and megal- combined to the end of words are -megaly and -megalia.

There aren’t many words that use the combining form megal-. One of them is megalopsia, also known as macropsia, “a defect of vision in which objects appear to be larger than their actual size.”

As we know, the combining form megal- means “abnormally large.” The second part of the word, -opsia, is a combining form that denotes visual disorders. Megalopsia has a literal sense of “large vision.”

What are some words related to the combining form megal-?

• Megalesia
• megalops

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

• macr-
• magnet-
• magn-
• mechan-
• melan-
• metall-

Megalops is a scientific term for the larval stage of marine crabs. Given that -ops refers to “eye,” what does megalops literally mean?