A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin

syn: ‘with, along with, in company with’ a Greek preposition with the dative = Latin cum, a preposition with the ablative, ‘with, along with, together with.’

syn-: in Gk. comp., with, together, together with, growing together; “union, adhesion, or growing together” (Lindley); adhesion, united, connate, q.v., the union of like parts; at the same time, synchronous (e.g. synanthesis); it is usually associated with adjectives and nouns; = gam-, gamo-, q.v.; = L. cum-, q.v., which undergoes similar spelling changes in compounds, and where that prefix is usually used with verb forms, such as participles;

NOTE: there is no connecting vowel between the prefix and the word element to which it is joined.

'syn-' remains so before vowels (synantherus, synoicus), consonants such as ‘d’ (Syndesmon) also:

1. syn- remains so before c, ch, g, k, ks, although in Greek there are more radical changes: in Latin e.g. syncarpus, synchronos, syngenesis, syngynus, but becomes:

2. sym- before the letters b, m and p, including ph and ps, as in symbiosis, symmetricus, sympatricus, sympetalus, Symphoricarpos, symphysis, Symphytum.

3. syl- before l; sylloge, syllogism.

4. syn- before an ‘s’ retains the final ‘n’ in words such as synsepalus and synstemonus, but the final ‘n’ may be elided:

5. sy- before s: synstole becomes systole; synstreptos becomes systreptos (Stearn); synstylius becomes systylius.

NOTE: synema, q.v., and synnema, q.v., both derive from Gk. syn- + nema,-atos (s.n.III) although in the first noun the second ‘n’ is elided.

NOTE: the prefix is the same as gamo-, in Gk. comp.; cf. gamopetalus = sympetalus, with united petals; gamosepalus = synsepalus, with connate or united sepals.

NOTE: opp. all-,allo- in Gk. comp. ‘other, different” e.g. sympatric, with the same distribution, opp. allopatric, with different distribution.

opp. apo-, in Gk. comp., away from, off; detached, separate

- apocarpus,-a,-um (adj.A), with free carpels

opp. chori-: in Gk. comp., separate, free;

- choripetalus, having separate petals.

opp. dialy-: in Gk. comp., separated, disbanded;

- dialypetalus, with separate petals, dialytrichus, with separate hairs.

opp. eleuther-, eleuthero-; “In Greek compounds = distinct, separate” (Lindley), free, not united.

opp. heter-, hetero-: in Gk. comp., different, other, uneven, e.g. synacmy, the stamens and pistils mature together, being the opposite of heteracmy (Jackson), cf. heterandrous and synandrous.