Word Watch: ‘day surgery’ has arrived!
Credit: Gennadiy Poznyakov
“Day surgery” has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The OED’s September update of what’s new in the Good Book included a “sub-entry” for “day surgery,” defined as “minor surgery that does not require the patient to stay in hospital overnight.”
More than 600 new words, phrases and “senses” were added to the OED since the last update in June, the publisher said.
The entry for “day surgery” noted its first use as being in 1968 in the British Medical Journal (now known as just BMJ).~TM
Word Watch: OED seeking origins of WWI medical terms
Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) have issued an appeal for references to terms that were coined during the First World War.
To mark the start of the Great War, the OED is revising war-era coinages. “Part of the revision process involves searching for earlier or additional evidence, ” the editors wrote. “Our first quotations are often from newspapers and magazines, and we know that there may well be earlier evidence in less-easily-accessible sources such as letters, diaries, and government records, many of which are now being made available in digital form for the first time.”
Two medical terms are among those for which the OED is hoping to find earlier references: shellshock and trench foot/mouth. Continue reading →
Murray's Review of Medical Journalism 