{"id":50303,"date":"2021-05-21T11:18:10","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T10:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=50303"},"modified":"2021-05-28T16:11:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T15:11:02","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-words-going-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/05\/21\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-words-going-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Words going viral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biomedical words recorded in the <\/span>Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>) as having newly appeared during 1970\u20132020 have become scarcer and scarcer with the passing years (Figure 1). For <\/span>1970<\/span><\/a> I found 61 newly recorded biomedical words in a grand total of 389, but in the 21 years from 2000 to 2020 inclusive I have identified only 29 out of 248 (Table 1).<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nFigure 1.<\/b> The numbers of new words (top panel) and of new biomedical words (bottom panel) by year of first citation in the <\/span>Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Table 1. <\/b>Biomedical words (n=29) in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> for which the earliest citations are from 2000\u20132020 inclusive (out of a total of 248); I have found one antedating (2 years)<\/span>
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\n*Antedating: optogenetics (<\/span>2006<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2000\u20132020 tranche of words is dominated by the field of microbiology: eight words in all, six of which are related to coronaviruses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avian infectious bronchitis was first described in newborn chicks in 1931. The filterable virus responsible was cultivated in 1937, and in 1951 a virus that caused hepatitis was isolated from mice. These were later identified as coronaviruses. For references see <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then in 1965, virologists David Tyrrell and Mark Bynoe published a <\/span>paper<\/span><\/a> in the <\/span>British Medical Journal<\/span><\/i>, in which they described a virus, which they called B814 and identified as a cause of the common cold. They thought that B814 and other similar viruses were rhinoviruses. However, in 1967 Tyrell and his colleague June Almeida published electron micrographs of viruses, 229E and B814, that were indistinguishable from the particles of avian infectious bronchitis. They first used the term \u201ccoronaviruses\u201d in 1968.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was little research on coronaviruses until the SARS coronavirus <\/span>epidemic<\/span><\/a> in 2003\u20134 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS or camel flu) in Saudi Arabia in 2012, also due to a coronavirus. On these occasions <\/span>publications<\/span><\/a> on coronaviruses increased. But neither of those epidemics compares with the deluge, the infodemic, of the last 18 months.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after identification of SARS-CoV2, and the disease it caused, abbreviations were invented to describe both the virus and the disease. The following have found their way into the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>, listed here with the dates on which they were first recorded (three of them on Twitter):<\/span><\/p>\n