ob-gyn revisited

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Sat Mar 31 03:45:38 UTC 2012


At HUP (acronym, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania), the Medical
Intensive Care Unit and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit are known by their
acronyms, pronounced /'mɪkju:/ and /'sɪkju:/... the latter being
particularly infelicitous, to my mind, especially when my wife was spending
a lot of time there.

Mark Mandel

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ...
>
> On the other hand, Departments of Ear, Nose and Throat can often be
> heard referred to as "ent" or "E.N.T.". Other abbreviations/initialism
> are often pronounced as separate letters--e.g., "O.R.", "E.M.T.",
> "I.C.U." (sorry, can't recall more than that on request--need to think
> more about that). But I've heard longer examples pronounced as words
> rather than initials. It could be that OBGYN is just short enough to
> fall into the former class.
>
>     VS-)
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list