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Joined: Aug 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Top of my head, and of course ICLIU, but doesn't the Devil's Dictionary often use "Old Scratch" for the devil? Was this perhaps a common US ruralism a century-plus ago?
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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in the story of the devil and Daniel Webster, the devil is frequently called old scratch.. it might well be from the scandinavian, but the relationship between itch (leacherous thought,) and scratch (satisfaction) would have contributed to it being thought an apt name.
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Really??? I had assumed in the Devil & Daniel Webster story that they used old scratch to name the Devil because an old scratch gets all infected and oozy and downright nasty looking.
See now, you learn something new every day.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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you learn something new every day
True, bel - now ifn I could only remember it!
fwiw, my original interlocutor tells me that in their neck of the woods "peelin' out" is associated with the sound of the action, whereas "gettin' scratch" is associated typically with the sight of the action - suggestive that it is the tyre tracks, or 'scratches' created by the ribs, that gave this usage.
But what a lovely thread this spun off to become - from West Coast wheelies to Icelandic devilry!
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 60
journeyman
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journeyman
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nancyk is right about pruritis. I knew that too, showing that you don't need an MD to translate the everyday into the arcane. A nurse can be just as unclear and exclusionary in her communication (nurse nancy, perhaps?).
A patient once asked me to stop using "necrotic" when talking to a student about her infected foot, when "dead" was what I really meant. Seems that the patients are on to us; we use language to obfuscate, to separate ourselves from the patient, to priviledge our communication. Sometimes they figure us out.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ugh, I don't like that idea Max. I don't choose to be ill and do not go about shopping for sicknesses so I am definitely not a client.
Patient is the perfect word because
a) it IS the defination of someone needing medical attention
and
b) in most of today's hospitals you have to be patient to get that attention.
[beware, rant following]
Seriously, does it really make a difference. Things aren't always 'nicey-nice'. Why has it become wrong to say handicapped? It became "disabled" at one point and now has moved on to "differently-abled". In all honesty, a person in a wheelchair is not treated differently because he is now differently-abled instead of being handicapped. If you are prejudiced you will be prejudiced no matter what.
A friend of mine has been handicapped since childhood and he refers to himself as such. The people he knows also refer to themselves as such (yes I asked him).
I understand what people are trying to do...by taking away the word to which a certain stigma is attached people hope the stigma will be erased...but it doesn't work that way.
And it ticks me off that I can't say someone is "special" anymore. What is he, mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, emotionally handicapped or just a really great guy. Grrr.
[end rant]
EDIT: All right, I'm calm now. I have to admit that maybe it's a cultural thing. In French Québec we don't have euphemisms like those and I guess I just don't understand the use for them.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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My sister, a psychiatric nurse, took great pains to disabuse me of the practice calling them "patients", she insists that they are "clients".
My wife, a professor of nursing at a university here, informs me that hospital nurses use either "clients" or "patients", the former somewhat more frequently, but that physicians never use the former term. An interesting dichotomy.
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Joined: Nov 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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My wife, a professor of nursing at a university here, informs me that hospital nurses use either "clients" or "patients", the former somewhat more frequently, but that physicians never use the former term. An interesting dichotomy.
Actually, my friends who are doctors in Zild talk "patient" and think "debtor". The costs of being in general practice these days are very high ...
BTW, Faldage, what was with that link to the "Travels"?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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