{"id":49709,"date":"2021-02-26T19:56:43","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T18:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=49709"},"modified":"2021-03-05T19:48:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T18:48:40","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-fertile-philology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/02\/26\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-fertile-philology\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Fertile philology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have now reached 1985 in my survey of words whose first citations listed in the <\/span>Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i> are from years spanning my 50 years as a physician. Four of them are to do with reproduction (Table 1).<\/span><\/p>\n

Table 1.<\/b> Biomedical words (n=26) in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> for <\/span>which the earliest citations are from 1985 (out of a total of 198); I have found one antedating (17 years)<\/span>
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\n*Antedating: angiogenin (<\/span>1968<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

First is mifepristone, which is used in combination with misoprostol in elective termination of pregnancy. Misoprostol featured in the <\/span>1977 list<\/span><\/a>. These generic names, both International Non-proprietary Names, approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), are derived variously, like many other drug names, from elements of their chemical names, structural features, and pharmacological associations. Misoprostol, for example, is an analogue of prostaglandin E1, and its name comes from the initial m in methyl, + iso (implying a mixture of stereoisomers) + prost[aglandin] + ol (implying an alcohol, in which an \u2013OH group is attached to an acyclic carbon atom). Mifepristone probably comes from elements in its chemical name: mi-fe- from -aminophenyl- and -pristone from \u2013propynylestradienone, \u2013one implying a ketone, R\u2013C=O.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two words, lower down the list, imply contraception\u2014a noun, contragestion, and a related adjective, contragestive. Contragestion is short for contragestation, whose adjectival form, contragestational, is short for contraprogestational. None of these three words is listed as a headword in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The earliest instance that I have found of any of these is for contragestation, found in an abstract <\/span>published<\/span><\/a> in <\/span>Marriage and Family Living<\/span><\/i> in November 1956: \u201cCatholic moral teaching rules out absolutely as means of fertility regulation any suppression of life once conception has taken place, whether this be by abortion, contragestation, or contranidation.\u201d These terms have been defined <\/span>elsewhere<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n