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QJM Advance Access originally published online on April 8, 2009
QJM 2009 102(7):509-510; doi:10.1093/qjmed/hcp014
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Physicians. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

When I use a word ... Fulsomely banning ‘compendious’

Jeff Aronson

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

        Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

        John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, 1865

Words change their meanings as language evolves. Take ‘ban’. It comes from the hypothetical Indo-European root BHA, to speak. In Greek BHA became {varphi}{alpha} (PHA), giving Formula (phasis, speech), Formula (phone, sound) and Formula (pheme, voice).

Polyphemus had perhaps a lot to say, a loud voice, or a wide reputation (fame). Phemius was Odysseus's renowned minstrel. Other derivatives include blasphemy and euphemism. Dysphasia and paraphasia are disorders of speech, and phatic utterances communicate feelings rather than ideas. Gramophones, telephones, megaphones and microphones convey sounds in their different ways, and a phoneme is . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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