{"id":9846,"date":"2023-11-22T23:04:12","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/?p=9846"},"modified":"2023-11-22T23:04:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:04:17","slug":"tortured-terminology-mangled-metaphors-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/2023\/11\/22\/tortured-terminology-mangled-metaphors-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Tortured Terminology, Mangled Metaphors, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letter from America<\/b><\/h1>\n

Back in about 1984, when my friend\u00a0Pauline Kamen\u2019s\u00a0mother (herself with a head of hair dyed a hue not known in the natural world) referred to a member of her bridge club as \u201cthe gal with the \u2018pitch-blonde\u2019 hair.\u201d I began to keep track of the amusing statements made by otherwise intelligent, well-educated individuals.<\/i><\/b><\/h4>\n

As I write this, the first person who comes to mind is the craggy-faced New England lawyer who assured my then-husband and me that he had gone over the real-estate contract we were about to sign with a \u201cfine-tuned comb.\u201d (He was obviously not going to kiss his fee down the toilet, was he? After all, in his small town, clients didn\u2019t ride in on white elephants every day.)<\/p>\n

The second was a teacher I once had who, when describing an oddity she had observed that day, called it \u201cneither fish nor good red herring.\u201d\u00a0 Now, I didn\u2019t know then (nor do I now) what makes a herring \u201cgood,\u201d but I sure as heck know that a herring is a fish.\u00a0 What she meant to say, of course, was \u201cneither fish nor fowl.\u201d\u00a0 I was too well mannered and, frankly, too chicken to correct a teacher, but I did think it a bit fishy that she was teaching, of all subjects, a high school course in world literature.<\/p>\n

That really shouldn\u2019t have surprised me, though, because even professional writers occasionally cause an alert reader to do a \u201cdouble tape,\u201d as a colleague of mine used to say.\u00a0 Take Tom Wolfe:\u00a0 In his hugely popular novel\u00a0Bonfire of the Vanities<\/i>, Wolfe wrote, \u201cAll at once he was alone in this noisy hive with no place to roost.\u201d\u00a0 (I have forgiven him and hope, if you even\u00a0remember<\/b>\u00a0this uncharacteristically awkward sentence, that you will, too.)<\/p>\n

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One hears laypeople torture the terminology peculiar to almost every profession, but a favorite source of these comes from folks in the medical field.\u00a0 Doctors and nurses are accustomed to hearing Alzheimer\u2019s disease referred to by some of their patients as \u201cold-timers\u2019 disease,\u201d for example.\u00a0 \u201cOld-timers\u201d has, in fact, become such a common mispronunciation that some of us use it on purpose. \u00a0Medical professionals can usually figure out what a patient means to say from the context, but sometimes it must be difficult for them to keep a straight face while they do so.<\/p>\n

\"titty\"titty<\/span><\/span>It must be fairly obvious to any doctor that a patient who is squirming in his chair, in all-too-apparent pain in his nether parts, that she doesn\u2019t\u00a0really<\/b>\u00a0have \u201casteroids,\u201d but rather that her problem is a flare-up of pesky hemorrhoids.\u00a0 What nurse wouldn\u2019t have to repress a chuckle when his patient includes \u201cgenital heart defect\u201d while reciting a past medical history of a \u201ccongenital\u201d cardiac condition?\u00a0 My old friend\u00a0Joan Calderone<\/b>\u00a0(who has never worked in healthcare herself but who has been married to her physician husband for so long that she could probably play one on TV) provided me with a classic patient complaint:\u00a0 \u201cFireballs of the Eucharist!\u201d\u00a0 Ummm, er\u2026AHA!\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 \u201cFibroids of the uterus!\u201d\u00a0 (It occurs to me that both fireballs and fibroids might cause a woman considerable discomfort.)<\/p>\n

When asked for his favorite mispronunciation of a prescription drug, my pharmacist Peter replied without missing a beat:\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0easy<\/b>,\u201d he chuckled.\u00a0 \u201cPeanut butter balls!\u201d\u00a0 Before I could ask him the actual name of the drug, Peter\u2019s pharmacist brother and partner Anthony chimed in from behind the counter.\u00a0 \u201cPhenobarbital!\u201d\u00a0 But of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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