Fomite :- an inanimate object that transmits infectious disease agents. Back-formation from the plural of Latin fomes 'tinder', fomites. Related to faveo 'to warm, keep warm; cherish'. Perhaps related to English to bake.
When and where did this back-formation occur? I always understood a back-formation was a (wrongly) assumed source for a word, which then became used in its own right, such as scavenger being assumed to come from a verb scavenge which did not actually exist until after a verb for the noun was thought desirable.
So, was fomites adopted into English and then fomite assumed? If so, what was fomites used to mean in English, and when did it drop out?
Bingley
First citation for fomite in the OED is 1859. It's a medical term, not one that was (or is) commonly used in polite brandy-and-cigars after dinner talk.
...but sounds like it ought to mean an explosive substance in frothy form; eg, so that it can easily be forced through a small opening to make, let’s say, a roadside bomb
1. Any inanimate object (as a towel or money or clothing or dishes or books or toys etc.) that can transmit infectious organisms from one person to another.
Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
"Fomite" is a common misspelling or typo for: comate, famine, finite, foliate, fomented, fomenter, omit, vomit, vomited.
Recently an anaesthetist was described as a fomite in the operating theatre (I am a surgeon philsopher as my email might suggest)
Fits well with insults theme of last week
In addition the Oz troglodyte is to found in the opal fields of Coober Pedy where the underground hotel/motel, shops and multiple residences are dug out of the beautiful yellow and pink hard clay, requiring no colour finishing, though lacquer is applied to control dust
Inside temperature some 23C all year - outside 0C some nights
50C in daytime
A fomite is any inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms and hence transferring them from one individual to another. A fomite can be anything such as a cloth or mop heads so when cleaning this is important to remember that this could aid when spreading pathogenic organisms.
Fomites was formerly used more-or-less interchangeably with "vector" in preventive medicine, but vector has come to mean living things that do the same thing, primarily (and according to some authorities, exclusively) arthropods.
I've also heard fomites used to mean feces by medical people, though not recently.
>I've also heard fomites used to mean feces by medical people, though not recently.
oh deer, isn't that usually fewmets?
Only when spoken by Dr. Hunter's poor relations.
like a comb which nits might catch a lift on to someone head.