This is for those of you who would appreciate a mug that reads, “I’m silently correcting your grammar.” I do that all the time, especially when people are trying to talk medical-ese.
Some misused words deserve fingernails on a blackboard revulsion. Prostrate (stretched out on the floor or ground face down) instead of prostate (a gland surrounding the bladder neck in male mammals) falls into that category, especially when spoken by a medical student. Regiment (a large array of — often armed — people or things, or an oppressive system or rule} instead of regimen (a prescribed course of treatment, life activities or diet), both of which derive from the Latin ‘regime’ for rule, comes close, especially when doctors, who are supposed to have been educated, screw it up and call a medication list a regiment.
Patients often use the term flu for any respiratory or gastrointestinal illness, not understanding that the word is short for Influenza, an illness caused by the influenza virus attacking the lungs, nose and throat. While viruses cause many other respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses, including the common cold, often with similar fever, malaise and myalgia, that doesn’t make them flu. Doctors often describe respiratory viral infections with these symptoms as flu-like illnesses, but the -like is usually lost on patients.
More forgivable are melenic vs. melanotic. Melenic is black stool, with or without visible blood. Melanotic refers to tissue with black pigmentation, like a mole or spot in the iris. Melan is Greek for black or dark, hence melancholia means deep, dark depression, melanin is a natural pigment that causes dark skin, and melanocytes are cells that generate melanin by oxidizing tyrosine, an amino acid.
There are also humorous misstatements such as, “I have a cough but I’m not worried because I don’t have a temperature.” Everyone has a temperature but not everyone has a fever. Anyone without a temperature should be very worried before rigor mortis appears. I’ve heard students say “no temperature” in their list of vital signs, making me think perhaps one wasn’t in fact measured or recorded.
Our culture has messed with some words, like diet and fit. The word diet is a noun referring to what we eat, not some exclusionary masochistic food plan or how we are losing weight, though they may be related. Fit signifies “of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose, or a state of wellbeing in which performance is optimal.” In our culture, distorted by Wallace Simpson’s “you can never be too thin or too rich” absurdity, people assume that a very thin person is fit, even if they are just starving weaklings like super-models.
Some words that sound similar are used (incorrectly) interchangeably. Doctors dilate eyes and strictures, causing dilation. Dilatation is a widened structure, like a duct or vessel, that seemingly happened without outside intervention. Preventive and preventative have the same meaning, though preventative can be used as a noun or adjective. Palpation is the noun form of palpate, to examine by touch. But we don’t palpitate the liver, since a palpitation, the sensation of an abnormal beat, usually of the anterior chest causing anxiety, is a noun and not a verb.
I have serious problems with dangling prepositions, though I know the grammar gods have lifted their prohibition. In my mind, “Where are you?” is less stupid and at least as functional as, “Where are you at?” Often dangling prepositions reflect inadequate vocabulary: “That is something I haven’t yet considered (or pondered or resolved),” works well to replace “That’s something I haven’t thought about.” Or a scientist, exploring a new line of investigation to change his/her research, should say, “I’m studying this new data in order to develop new work projects” in place of, “This is something I’m looking at to consider alternatives to work on.”
Computers have made these danglers very common: Log on and off have replaced start and end. Cars are no better. We turn them on and off and sadly say she was run over rather than murdered by the driver. Family members expect us to cheer up or hold on, rather than talk about moods or consider that an interruption may be valid reason for a delay. They have seemingly been used forever. Hermann Hesse has Siddhartha’s father getting up and saying “What are you waiting for?” instead of rising to say, “Why are you still here and what do you want?”
Common usage doesn’t make it right. People often add the word on, as in educate, debate, or write on, which to me just sounds lazy and should be replaced with “a subject for more education/debate/writing.”
I can’t see your punctuation while listening to you, but incorrect personal apostrophe placement abounds. It’s is a contraction of it and is, while its refers to something that an impersonal it owns or has as a characteristic. In Florida Man, an otherwise stupid Netflix show, the protagonist has a problem with apostrophes missing from Shandys but present in Burger’s and Brew.
One of my pet peeves is the word seminal, supposedly used to indicate original or strongly influencing later developments. I find it hard to understand how a fluid containing millions of sperm blindly swimming around with hopes of bumping into an egg is either original or having a long-lasting influence exceeding an average lifespan. There are nearly four billion males on earth, most with at least some semen. It is not original. If we weren’t in a chauvinistic, patriarchal society, we might call these events ovumal, egginal, ovarial, original, influential, or pistilinal (from flowers’ egg structures). Since the “seminal” events mentioned usually are the result of years of careful research, often by women, a sudden realization certainly doesn’t apply to things like the elucidation of DNA’s structure or the recognition of vitamins’ existence.
I’m not anti-social, but knowing that I’m mercilessly judging speech might keep me from receiving invitations to have coffee together while discussing anything. If I am invited somewhere, I’m likely to take, not bring, something to share. We bring something here and take something there. Or, if confused, we share, carry, transport or deliver. Office staff often say, “If you would come this way and fill out this form,” without saying what would follow as the prize for complying. We also often hear staff and hospital personnel say, “Can you tell me your name?” That’s just demeaning, since the obvious answer is, “Yes, I can, my brain works well, so would you like me to say it to you?” Mentioning how stupid that question is elicits blank stares and I’m sure they don’t change it to “What is your name?” for the next victim.
These verbal atrocities are irritating, at least to me, and obviously one article or critical mug isn’t going to correct common, stupid word usage. Perhaps medical schools should work on the English language as part of how to interact with a patient, in addition to taking a history and doing a physical exam, to which most schools are also giving short shrift. Many people, including doctors, mispronounce medication, especially generic, scientific names. Preventing these errors requires continuing medical education or at least listening to a knowledgeable person who knows how to say them properly.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Let’s have a conversation.
