Skip Navigation



QJM Advance Access published online on April 8, 2009
QJM, doi:10.1093/qjmed/hcp014
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
102/7/509    most recent
hcp014v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Aronson, J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Aronson, J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 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]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?