Dermatology glossary
The 26 terms this site uses, as a file rather than as pages. Published under CC BY 4.0, so you may copy, adapt and sell work built on it, provided you say where it came from.
What each record contains
Seven fields. The term itself and its slug; the definition, written to stand alone rather than to make sense only in context; the set it belongs to, either skin anatomy or dermatology terms; the layer of skin it sits in where that applies, and an empty string where it does not; the address of the page it came from; and the date that page was last updated.
That empty layer field is worth a word. Roughly half the vocabulary in a dermatology glossary describes a structure you could point to in a cross-section, and the rest describes a procedure, an appearance or a process. Filling the field for those would have meant inventing an answer, which is the one thing a reference file must never do.
How the definitions were written
Each one is original prose, written for somebody who has just heard the word in a consultation and did not want to interrupt to ask. None is lifted from a published source, and that is not modesty about our sources but a constraint imposed by them: of the health bodies this site cites, almost none permits reproduction, as the companion register sets out in detail.
Being original is also what makes the licence possible. We can give this away because it is ours to give.
The definitions carry no clinical claims. A definition says what a word means; it does not say what anybody has, how serious it is, or what should be done about it. Read the whole file through and you will find no threshold, no dose and no criterion, because the glossary is vocabulary and nothing else.
What it is good for
Building a tooltip layer over your own health content, checking that your house style matches how clinicians actually use a word, seeding a translation, or training something. All of it is permitted. The attribution string sits inside the JSON so that nobody has to compose one.
What it is not good for is standing in for a dermatology reference. This is a reading aid for patients, chosen and worded for that purpose, and a clinician needs something else entirely.
The terms
Every entry below links to its own page, which carries the definition in context along with the pages that use the term.
- Biopsy
- Collagen
- Comedone
- Dermatophyte
- Dermatoscope
- Dermis
- Dermo-epidermal junction
- Epidermis
- Erythema
- Excoriation
- Hair follicle
- Hypodermis
- Keratinocyte
- Lesion
- Macule
- Melanin
- Melanocyte
- Naevus
- Papule
- Plaque
- Pruritus
- Pustule
- Scale
- Sebaceous gland
- Sebum
- Stratum corneum
Citing it
Attribution with a link satisfies the licence. Where you quote one definition rather than the set, link the entry itself instead: your reader gets the context, and we get the same credit.
Dermatology glossary by dermatology-clinic.net, licensed CC BY 4.0. Last checked .