Prefix · temperature · cold
Means "cold" or "freezing": cryogenic, cryotherapy, cryonics, cryopreservation.
Written by Bryan López, English teacher · Updated
Cryo- comes from the Greek kryos, which means "cold" or "ice". It is used in science and medicine to talk about extreme cold and freezing. If you see cryo- in a word, think of something very cold, kept cold or frozen on purpose.
Cryo- is more present than ever. Athletes use cold chambers to recover faster, laboratories freeze samples to keep them for years and doctors have techniques that use cold to treat damaged tissue. If you read health or science news in English, this is a prefix you will run into.
Combines with Greek and Latin roots in scientific and medical vocabulary:
Pronunciation: /ˈkraɪ.oʊ/ — the y sounds like /aɪ/ as in "pie".
cryo-/ˈkraɪ.oʊ/
Tap the button to hear how the prefix sounds. Each word in the table has its own audio.
"Cryonics" (cryo- + -nics = practice/technique): the speculative and controversial practice of preserving human bodies at cryogenic temperatures. "Cryogenics" (cryo- + -genics = science): the physics of matter at extremely low temperatures. The science is cryogenics; the speculative practice of freezing people is cryonics.
A trick to remember it
Think of "cryotherapy", already familiar: cryo- = extreme cold, freezing. cryogenic, cryonics.
Exercise 1 · Form the word
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
What does cryogenics study?
The prefix cryo- means "cold" or "freezing": cryogenic, cryotherapy, cryonics, cryopreservation.
The prefix cryo- is pronounced /ˈkraɪ.oʊ/. For example, "cryogenic".
"genic" becomes "cryogenic". It is a typical example of the cryo- prefix.
un-, re-, pre-, dis-, over-, in-... every beginning you need to unlock thousands of English words at once.