Phrase Anatomy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Surgeons_at_Work.jpg

Curiosities of medical language:

  • HIRSCHSPRUNG’S DISEASE contains seven consecutive consonants.
  • PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM contains each vowel at least twice.
  • CHOLANGIOCHOLECYSTOCHOLEDOCHECTOMY contains six Cs.
  • LAPAROHYSTEROSALPINGOOOPHORECTOMY has three consecutive Os.
  • PANCREATICODUODENOSTOMY contains five vowels in alphabetical order. SUBPOPLITEAL has them in reverse order.
  • UVULOPALATOPHARYNGOPLASTY, SUPRADIAPHRAGMATICALLY, and MACRACANTHORHYNCHIASIS contain no Es.
  • VESICULOGRAPHY contains no repeated letters.
  • PARASITOLOGICAL alternates vowels and consonants.
  • HYDROXYZINE is the only word in the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) that contains XYZ.
  • BIOPSY is in alphabetical order.
  • Each letter in ZOONOSIS is rotationally symmetrical in uppercase.
  • Each letter in BERIBERI and INTESTINES appears twice.

In 2007 a Spanish physician wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine to tell of a 29-year-old patient with acute tendonitis isolated to the right infraspinatus. The doctor traced the problem to the patient’s new Wii videogame, with which he’d played tennis for several hours the previous day. He dubbed the ailment WIIITIS, a word with three consecutive Is. It’s a variant of NINTENDINITIS, a condition that doctors first recognized in 1990.

(Thanks, Bob.)