When I was a boy I suffered from slight dyslexia. It was not that bad but sometimes my mind would go completely blank when I tried to spell a word. Later on I tried to visualize the word before I spelled it and in most cases that worked a treat. In the case of hemorrhoids my old technique has proved a complete failure. If hemorrhoids is one of the most common ailments known to man (with 50% of us having some kind of abnormality) then the word hemorrhoid, hemroid, hemoroid, heamorrhoid must be one of the commonest misspellings.
The first reference to hemorrhoids was by Aristotle about the year 360BC. I have no idea how he spelt it but by 1350AD they started to spell it emoroides in old English. This came from the Latin haimorroida which means discharging blood. At least that is spot on. Why can’t it just be piles though?
In modern spelling this has become correctly hemorrhoid for the noun and hemorrhoidal for the adjective though the spellchecker in Microsoft Word still does not recognize this second form. Dictionaries normally define the word something like “an abnormally enlarged vein in the anal sphincter” even though the word also applies medically to the normal un-enlarged structure.
If you have difficulty remembering the spelling split the word in two hemor.rhoid and then spell and visualize the two parts separately. You could even give up and call it a hemroid as everybody will know what you mean. Incidentally this spelling is keyed into Google with similar frequency to the technically correct spelling so you will be in good company.
The only good thing to know about hemorrhoids is that they are normally not particularly serious and most people do not need surgery. Using a good quality hemorrhoidal cream when symptoms first appear is a excellent start to treating them.
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