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eftychia: Lego-ish figure in blue dress, with beard and breasts, holding sword and electric guitar (lego-blue)
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Abusing the Language

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 02:49pm on 2006-01-07 under

While making breakfast, the phrase "intercranial pressure" popped into my brain, and I started pondering what excuse could make the phrase make sense. I've decided: intercranial pressure is what results when a strategy meeting that started with the suggestion, "let's put our heads together on this," becomes stressful.

The other idea I came up with involved siamese twins, but I decided Iwouldn't be able to find as many excuses to use that. And the Three Stooges image that I had seemed too contrived. (Then again, it'd be clearer for not being figurative...)

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There are 7 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] kathrynt.livejournal.com at 08:15pm on 2006-01-07
. . . you do know that intercranial pressure has a documented and oft-used medical meaning, right?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 08:18pm on 2006-01-07
Whoops. I knew about intracranial pressure in that context but had overlooked intercranial pressure.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] kathrynt.livejournal.com at 08:20pm on 2006-01-07
Double whoop! I somehow managed to read intra even while typing inter.
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Hundredfold whoops, and the rest aren't yours

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 08:33pm on 2006-01-07
Apparently some medical sites (including case studies) flip-flop between the two (in the same document) enough to make things really confusing when I went to look for the "inter" version. So far, I think all the instances of "intercranial pressure" are typos or thinkos (when I restricted the search to glossary pages, the only "intercranial pressure" I found was the expansion of the abbreviation "ICP", which was listed under "intracranial pressure" as being the abbreviation of that) ... but the number of "intercranial pressure" measuring devices on the market has me wondering whether I'm still overlooking something.

And this is in the writing of folks whose business it is to know the terminology.

Then again, I did have an ER doctor send me a bill for the service, "diagnosis: acute fracture, right fifth metatarsal," when I'd gone in with a broken hand. So maybe their legendary handwriting isn't the only language problem doctors have.
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Re: Hundredfold whoops, and the rest aren't yours

posted by [identity profile] kathrynt.livejournal.com at 08:45pm on 2006-01-07
Hm. . . I can find a little bit of evidence that "intercranial" means "between the skull and the meninges," and "intracranial" means "within the meninges." But it certainly doesn't seem to be used consistently.
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Re: Hundredfold whoops, and the rest aren't yours

posted by [identity profile] thette.livejournal.com at 09:34pm on 2006-01-07
That's still intracranial.
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Re: Hundredfold whoops, and the rest aren't yours

posted by [identity profile] kathrynt.livejournal.com at 09:43pm on 2006-01-07
Well then I got nothin.
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