This week’s theme
Eponyms

This week’s words
Vulcan
Taylorism
Palladian
gomer
alexander

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(GOH-muhr)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A naive and inept trainee or worker.
2. An undesirable hospital patient, one who may be unpleasant, senile, or unresponsive to treatment.
3. A conical chamber used in guns and mortars.

ETYMOLOGY:

For 1: Of unconfirmed origin, but likely after Gomer Pyle, a character in the television series The Andy Griffith Show, later in his own spin-off show Gomer Pyle, USMC, broadcast in the 1960s. Earliest documented use: 1967.

For 2: Most likely from the same origin as sense 1. It has been suggested that it’s an acronym for “Get Out of My Emergency Room”, but that may be a backronym (an acronym coined to explain a word that’s not actually an acronym). Earliest documented use: 1972.

For 3: After Louis-Gabriel de Gomer (1718-1798), French military officer who invented it. Earliest documented use: 1828.

USAGE:

“I was certain any gomer could figure the plan.”
Robert Barr; For the Love of Flight; Dorrance Publishing; 2014.

“Another category of gomers was little old ladies in their seventies whose chief complaint was constipation.”
Otis Webb Brawley, MD; How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America; St. Martin’s Press; 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: