Tony Delamothe retires from The BMJ today, after nearly 30 years. His experience and expertise will be greatly missed. Here I am interested in his name. “Ant[h]ony” comes from the Roman name Antonius, of unknown origin. The intrusive h comes from confusion with the Greek word ἄνθος, a flower. But what about “Delamothe”? Some surnames are […]
Category: Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . .Tariffs
The news that certain companies have been charging over the odds for non-branded pharmaceutical products is not surprising, given activities in this market elsewhere. Last year the US rights to Daraprim, which contains pyrimethamine, used to treat toxoplasmosis and malaria, were acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals, who raised the price of a tablet from $13.50 to […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . MARKing and preventing medication errors
The European Medicines Agency’s definition of a medication error, published last year, is “an unintended failure in the treatment process that leads to, or has the potential to lead to, harm to the patient”. This, with the addition of a single word, “unintended”, is the definition that Robin Ferner and I suggested 16 years ago. […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Errors
The village of Erice sits above the town of Trapani on top of a mountain about 750 metres above sea level in the north-west corner of Sicily (picture below). Its original name was Ἐρυξ, after the Sicilian king of that name, a son of Aphrodite and either Boutes, an Argonaut, or Poseidon, the god of […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Political personification
Having deconstructed part of the Conservative Party’s 2015 manifesto in last week’s blog, I thought that I ought to extend the favour this week to the Labour Party’s 2015 manifesto. Reading it, I was immediately struck by a phenomenon that I previously described when discussing weasel words—the flexible use of the words “we” and “our”, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: Mandates and manifestos
I recently heard Jeremy Hunt, UK health secretary, on the Today programme claiming that the Government has a mandate for the controversial contract that it wants junior hospital doctors to sign. I can’t find that mentioned in the Conservative Party’s 2015 manifesto. The Indo-European root MAN meant a hand. The Latin word was manus, from which […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Recognising weasel words
To recap. A weasel word is defined in the OED as “an equivocating or ambiguous word, which takes away the force or meaning of the concept being expressed”. “I can suck melancholy out of a song,” says Shakespeare’s Jaques in As You Like It (picture), “as a weasel sucks eggs.” The phrase “weasel words” was […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Weasel words
It has been reported that Department of Health lawyers have said that the secretary of state for health, known to us as the SoSH or the Cunctator, never intended to “impose” a contract on the junior hospital doctors, only that the contract would be “introduced” from August (as quoted in the Independent on 18 April). […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A contract or a contra-act?
So, the junior hospital doctors’ “contract” has been published, and the secretary of state for health, described in BMA documents as “SoSH”, which is also an obsolete word meaning a dull, heavy sound or a thud, has called it a “draft final version”—a contradiction in terms. The word “draft” comes from an Indo-European root meaning […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Mechanisms and evidence
To recap: my definition of a pharmacological mechanism, slightly expanded from before, is “one or more entities and activities organised spatially and temporally to interact in such a way as to be associated, depending on the milieu, with a phenomenon or phenomena”. In what ways can pharmacological mechanisms, so defined, be used as evidence? The […]