Jack Thornton

Education and training in most vocations call for the assimilation of the associated vocabulary. Its function is primarily to facilitate communication, but a technical term sometimes can be more cumbersome than its simple everyday equivalent.

In veterinary school, medical terms are fundamental to the academic process. I remember that a term very frequently used to describe a general distribution - i.e., something commonly found almost everywhere - was the word ubiquitous.

So accustomed did I become to this non-ubiquitous word that to this day I often consciously refrain from using it to avoid sounding pretentious.

Sometimes these words jump out to embarrass me anyway.

In graduate school, while on a field trip in a fish disease course, I asked a catfish farmer if the hose from which I was about to drink carried potable water. This term meaning clean or safe to drink was used routinely during my four years in veterinary school.

Upon returning to the classroom, our professor used my comment in front of the class as an example of how not to relate to clients in our field. In short, I was made to feel as if I were showing off my fancy degree.

Anyway, his point was

well taken and it probably

was my pomposity - whoops, I mean self-importance - that precipitated this moment of minor humiliation.

Just the other day while examining a client's cat, which was extremely thin and frail, I described the cat's condition to its owner as "very emaciated."

Later during the examination, the owner twice mentioned to me that he could see that his cat, in fact, was very emancipated.

So perhaps the moral to this little story is that, even at risk of sounding pretentious, if you feel your vocabulary is getting a little thin, beef it up with a few more obscure synonyms.

The result could set you free.



Jack Thornton is a semiretired veterinarian.