Affixes

The name of the authoritarian governmental system fascism derives from the fasces (plural of fascis), a bundle of rods with a projecting axe blade, carried by a lictor in ancient Rome as a symbol of a magistrate's power. In anatomy, fascia has a specific sense of a thin sheath of fibrous tissue enclosing a muscle or other organ; linked words are fasciculation, a brief spontaneous contraction affecting a small number of muscle fibres, and fasciitis, inflammation of the fascia of a muscle or organ. A fascicle (or fascicule) can be a separately published instalment of a printed work or, in anatomy and biology, a bundle of structures, such as nerve or muscle fibres or conducting vessels in plants, for which an alternative term is fasciculus. Fascioliasis, infestation of a human or an animal with the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, derives from the related Latin fasciola, a small bandage.