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The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American) 83:1269-1181 (2001)
© 2001 The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc.

The Orthopaedic Forum

Errors of Language in Orthopaedics

Mohammad Diab, MD


Mohammad Diab, MD
Department of Orthopaedics, CH-59, Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, 4800 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98105. E-mail address: mdiab@chmc.org

The author did not receive grants or outside funding in support of his research or preparation of this manuscript. He did not receive payments or other benefits or a commitment or agreement to provide such benefits from a commercial entity. No commercial entity paid or directed, or agreed to pay or direct, any benefits to any research fund, foundation, educational institution, or other charitable or nonprofit organization with which the author is affiliated or associated.

The varied influences to which medicine has been subjected, and the ages that it has endured, have produced a language that is in constant flux. The language of orthopaedics includes corruptions that, while they defy the rules of philology, have gained acceptance essentially because they are familiar. An awareness and understanding of such corruptions is useful, both for restoring consistency and accuracy of communication and for providing a window into history.

Inflection

Greek and Latin are inflected languages. Endings are appended to nouns and verbs to confer distinct senses. Nouns belong to declensions and are said to be declined; verbs belong to conjugations and are said to be conjugated. What is achieved by inflection in Greek and Latin is achieved principally by word order and prepositions in English. In Greek and Latin, the endings of nouns identify gender, number, and case. The gender may be masculine, feminine, or neuter. The number . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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