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Joined: Aug 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,666 Likes: 1 |
Part of the problem is that you want your word/phrase to be a zinger. I'm afraid that's incompatible with the concept of the altruistic-probono-professional, one of whose attributes is a touch of self-effacement. (Otherwise I'm not doing this for the general welfare but rather so that You [whoever and however-many You may be] will think I'm pretty hot stuff. And so noble, too.) That makes "zingerhood" a bit oxymoronic. Pizzazz just isn't part of the description.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Pizzazz just isn't part of the description.
That would be true if maahey is a doctor. If maahey is a PR person hired by doctors I don't see a problem.
Sometimes ya gots ta hire someone to blow your horn.
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Joined: Aug 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,666 Likes: 1 |
Either way it's not a problem. It just makes it harder to come up with the zinger of a word.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Well, I'm not offended ... just exasperated because I think altruistic is the correct word and I feel like I am talking to a brick wall. But if I keep going on about I'll just be flogging a dead horse. And when the dead horse falls off the brick wall we won't be able to put the metaphors back together again.
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Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
healarian : ( he ah LAIR ee un ) one who doctors primarily to heal rather than to make money.
Rationalizers being every doctor, every doctor is a healarian.
heal + arian (after humanitarian).
[ s/mw 2002.]
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Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Dunno, Alex, I don't think altruism quite gets the point of what I think Maahey is wanting across. Altruism is one of those "dirty" words, kind of reverse selfishness. The value of altruism as a term, for me, was ruined the day that E.O. Wilson invented the quasi soft (read: softer than usual) pseudoscience of sociobiology and his eager acolytes pounced on apparent altruism in the animal world as being a bold statement in favour of nature over nurture. Phylogeny recapitulating ontogeny ad infinitum and all that jazz ...
I have this vision of a bunch of physicians, wearing green scrubs, masks and surgical gloves over the top of leather jackets, dirty jeans and winklepickers, stalking ill people through the alleys and byways of the city, leaping on them unawares after running a comb through their hair and emptying the contents of their V8 lowrider crash cart into the victims' unwilling veins ... "Wassa matter, punk. Doncha wanna get better?"
Dunno, is it me?
- Pfranz
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,666 Likes: 1
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,666 Likes: 1 |
healarian : ( he ah LAIR ee un ) one who doctors primarily to heal rather than to make money.
Good, but incomplete. Doctors work to prevent, as much as to heal - by the time healing is needed, often it's too late.
Edit: Pf - you mean first the patient has to want to be healed? Sounds too much like pfsychiatrists changing a lightbulb...
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
eleemosynary? Nice word, but not convinced that it applies to the medical profession.
But what you had asked for was not a word that applies to the medical profession in general, but more restrictive than that.
You noticed that I put a question mark out there. That was because I was not myself convinced, but was merely throwing it out for discussion.
TEd
TEd
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
OK, doctors and witch doctors like long words that serve to flim-flam the paying customers, so how about...
vicaponicboxdocs (VIS-uh-po-NIKS-BOX-DOXS) doctors who have forgone lucrative positions in high society practice because of their altruistic desire to rid the poor neighborhoods around them of unnecessary pain and suffering.
I coulda been somebody, I coulda been a contender, were it not for this godforsaken curse of vicaponicism.
(vicinage) neighborhood + (aponic) free of pain + (doc-in-a-box) self-explanatory.
[s/mw 2002]
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Joined: Jul 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
Actually it's in a lot of words:
geriatric, psychiatric, pediatric.
I do a lot of crossword puzzles, and I have noticed over the years that relatively rare words seem to pop up in cycles. Five years ago you would never have seen iatro or iatric in a crossword puzzle, not even the dreaded Sunday NY Times. Today I run across it at least once a week. I have to assume that there's a loose fellowship of builders who watch each others work to learn and borrow.
TEd
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