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TEd said (Okay, so it doesn't rhyme, but I don't care): A part of it is the fact that use of arcane language makes it more difficult for people to fake their way into the profession, I'm certain.
As I just noted in another thread in Information and Announcements, I'm an economist by training. One of the first things you're taught (well, almost) is that the object of every economic grouping is to ensure that sufficient barriers are put up to entry to discourage the idea of a homogenous product. Medicine, Law, Economics, Accountancy and virtually every other profession uses language as part of that barrier.
You will have noted that most of them try to get themselves set up with some form of Government-enforced registration system (which they themselves control), which represents, of course, another barrier to entry. This is a good thing in many cases, naturally, but it serves to reinforce my point.
What seems a muddy approach to the professional language to outsiders is actually, in many cases, a finely-tuned precision of meaning within the community of such professionals.
For instance, a "float" means a buoyant object which holds a line up to a fisherman, operating cash to a businessman and a metal implement for levelling concrete to a builder.
Ah, well. End of sermon!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Latin in medicine, the law, etc.
I have no doubt the reason the use of Latin in the "learned" professions stuck on past the 18th century is entirely a matter of snobbery. You can't really make out a case for Latin being more useful than English; it's just a matter of defining a clahss (as we Yanks disdainfully call it).
That said, I have a question for all of you who speak non-American English: Why is the venue for surgical procedures called an operating theatre? (We call it an operating room). It certainly isn't a place of entertainment. (Except on TV). Your thoughts? (I don't expect facts, but then I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone came up with facts).
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Couldn't it just be that using the Latin in medicine is the same as Latin in music?
I was taught that the Latin, being a "dead" language, was static and therefore does not change ... so an American musician seeing "Pronto" on a score written by a Norwegian would know that the passage was to be played fast. Similar to medicine??
Would seem sensible to me in these days of international travel. I like the idea that the MD in Japan would know by the Latin how many times a day I have to take my medicine.
Ok, I am ready to take my medicine on this one.
wow
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Why is the venue for surgical procedures called an operating theatre?
Two questions here-- one answer is from M-W 10th-- theater...
3 a : a place rising by steps or gradations <a woody theater of stateliest view -- John Milton>
b : a room often with rising tiers of seats for assemblies (as for lectures or surgical demonstrations)
In day's past, operation where done in 3.B, the operation theater-- some teaching hospitals still have them, in addition to OR's. (NY's famous "belleview' hospital for one) but the seat are now above, and seperated by glass from the OR.
now as for why theatre and not theater....?
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In reply to:
Latin in music
Yes and no, Wow. It's not Latin which is used in music, it's Italian (they were the first to invent a more-or-less standard set of directions which had more-or-less precise meanings) and the Italian directions have never been universal. German composers will say breit instead of largo and French composers (naturally) usually write their directions in French. It's mostly English and Americans who have preserved the Italian system, even translating directions in German, in an edition of Bach, for instance, into Italian. But that's dying out. More and more, composers are using, and publishers printing, directions in the composers language. (except in the case of composers like Sibelius, since nobody reads Finnish).
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since nobody reads FinnishSome 5 million Finn's might disagree-- (and that's allowing that children under the age of 5 don't read, and that the population is not 100% literate) http://www.stat.fi/tk/tp/tasku/taskue_vaesto.html
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In reply to:
5 million Finns
True, O Queen. But other than Finns?
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theatre and not theaterI was once being wheeled into theatre for a double wisdom tooth extraction. As I started to fade under the anaesthetic, a nurse bent over me, chatting, and asked what I did for a living "I'm a theatre manager", I replied. Her face lit up in apparent understanding - "Oh, which hospital?" I was spared the explanations by drifting into sweet oblivion 
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Hi - my first time on this excellent board and I get to correct somebody (and the web site cited)! Stat is from STATIM, not statinum. I studied 5 years of Latin, but still had to check the Latin-English dictionary at http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Latin/ to be sure enough to post this.
That medical words site may not be wholly reliable.
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>Stat is from STATIM, not statinum.
hi hyla! just hieing in to say that W3 agrees with you.
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