Just to be the devil's advocate: True, robert, but ash-leafed maple is more clear to someone who has never lived in box elder country. Isn't the name of the game communication? >>> rleopard@xxxxxxxxxxxx 11/18/2006 11:24 AM >>> My students come to class knowing Eustacian & Fallopian tubes. Pharyngotympanic tube is totally overwhelming in its size and foreign look. Auditory tube is yet another word they would prefer not to have to learn. I have to tell them that these are synonyms for words they already know ? and will hear in medicine, not the new, awkward, but ?preferred? term. Perhaps some words from another branch of biology will illustrate the point. I also teach botany. In botany there has been an attempt to change the common name of Acer negundo from ?Box elder? to ?Ash-leaved maple.? It will never work, of course. Anyone who knows it as Acer negundo will use that, those who only know Box elder will use that. Anyone using ?Ash-leaved maple? will merely sound out of touch and pedantic. Similarly, many of my students are already in medicine as LPNs or EMTs. They know what words are in use in medicine, and pharyngotympanic tube is NOT one of them. Robert Leopard Instructor of Biology Monroe Community College _____ From: HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alan Magid Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2006 11:08 AM To: HAPS Subject: [HAPS-L] Where do words come from? Why do they last? Why do they disappear? The answer to these questions is ?usage?. People devise words and retain them in language because of their utility. The proper test then is utility, not purity. Efforts by self-constituted authority to willfully supplant words in wide use by ?preferred? terms rarely succeed. Witness the fate of Bowdler?s efforts to ?improve? classical literature, for example. An eponym may seem obscure to those first encountering it but with usage it becomes familiar and even necessary. A good example for the present discussion is the ?sphincter of Oddi?. Should we prefer it in our teaching to ?hepatopancreatic sphincter?? Yes, of course, because words are tools, and we shouldn?t send our students into the world equipped with useless tools. A quick search of Google found 155,000 references to ?sphincter of Oddi? but only 534 to ?hepatopancreatic sphincter?. Why stuff our students? heads full of marginally useful terms (words are NOT A&P information), when there is such a keen need to reserve that limited neural real estate for truly important information such as the notion that passage between the digestive organs is controlled and regulated by ?circular ? or spiral- bands of muscle in the walls of hollow viscera?. For some purposes, for example, publishing original research in the specialized scientific literature, compulsory adherence to a prescribed Nomina can be justified. But in the context of undergraduate health education it is scarcely worth the effort. -Alan
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