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-drome

Also ‑dromic and ‑dromous.

Running or racing; proceeding in a given way.

Greek dromos, course; running.

Examples of the first sense include hippodrome (Greek hippos, horse), originally a course for chariot or horse races in ancient Greece or Rome, but in English a grandiose name for a circus, later applied to theatres or concert halls; velodrome (French vélo, bicycle), a cycle-racing track; aerodrome, a British term for a small airport or airfield; cosmodrome (Greek kosmos, world), a launching site for spacecraft in the countries of the former USSR.

The idea of proceeding in a given way appears in the medical terms syndrome (Greek sun‑, together), a group of symptoms which occur together or a condition with such a set of symptoms, and prodrome (Greek pro, before), an early symptom indicating the onset of a disease or illness. It also occurs in palindrome (Greek palin, again), a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backwards as forwards, and loxodrome (Greek loxos, slanting), an imaginary line on the earth's surface cutting all meridians at the same angle.

Adjectives corresponding to these nouns are formed in ‑dromic (see ‑ic): loxodromic, palindromic. A few adjectives exist in ‑dromous (see ‑ous), but these do not have associated nouns in ‑drome: anadromous (Greek ana‑, up), of a fish, such as the salmon, that migrates up rivers from the sea to spawn, the opposite of which is catadromous (Greek kata, down), of ones that migrate downstream, as the eel does.

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