Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🦴 Partial bone break 🦴 Bone partly cracked 🌱 A young twig
greenstick

greenstick

7.9
Making a bone bend and crack without breaking completely
  • adjective
  • /ˈɡriːnˌstɪk/
  • Specialized
translation icon : en verde
  • She learned that a greenstick fracture occurs when a bone bends and cracks without fully breaking.

Examples

  • The doctor explained that a greenstick fracture is common in children because their bones are softer.

  • Some more fractures are greenstick, impacted, and compound.

    Academic text (2002)

  • After the fall, the X-ray revealed that he had sustained a greenstick fracture in his arm.

Compounds

greenstick fracture
  • Specialized
1 4.8

A bend and crack in a child's bone that does not break all the way through

How Complete

compound fracture
  • Specialized
6 6.0
complete fracture
  • Specialized
4.9
greenstick
  • Specialized
7.9

Surface Forms

greenstick positive

Morphology

greenstick = green + stick (semi-transparent) = green + stick

The medical term is named by analogy to a fresh pliable twig (green stick); the components are literal but the specialized fracture meaning is metaphorical and not fully predictable from the parts.

Etymology

Greenstick comes from the words green (meaning 'fresh') and stick (meaning 'twig'), and doctors used the image of a young twig because a child's bone bends and cracks like that, so greenstick describes a bone that bends and cracks without breaking all the way.