bio = life

con = with

dia = (Latin) day

diary = Anglicized pl. of diarium (Latin): “what is afforded this day.”

fess = speak (profess —> speak out; confess —> speak to/with; circumfess —> speak around; abfess —> speak oneself at a distance from)

graph = picture

jour = (French) day

journal = from diurnus (Latin via Old French “jurnal”): “of the day.”

log = a medium of record

memoire = a distillation of memory, an account of experience. Connotes personal perspective, but can also be used in dissertations and theses as accounts of a personal remembrance of learning.

meta = beyond; of itself rather than unto its imagined domain; recursive or compounded, as from a domain of things and ideas in the world, to a domain of domains in the idea of the thing.

“-y” attached as suffix to a word describing a product or phenomenon, conveys the process or discipline related to its production (measurement of spectra —> spectrometry; drawing-out of codes —> cryptography; naming of astroids and such things —> astronomy; think also of usury, larceny, and penury…)