Bishop Luffa: Fill & Download for Free

Doctors already do use plenty of Germanic words in medicine. They also use words with Greek and Latin roots, though. A lot of times people like to complain about the “Latinization” of English and insist that we should return to our language’s original, Germanic purity. The problem is that this idea is motivated by a faulty idea of what language is and how it works.Lots of people believe in the idea that our language used to be simple and logical, but now we have gone and ruined it by introducing foreign vocabulary. In reality, though, the introduction of words of non-English derivation has not made our language any less inherently coherent. If people cannot understand Greek and Latin words, it is just because they are not familiar with them, not because the words themselves are inherently difficult to understand.Trying to go back to our original, Germanic purity would be largely pointless. The purpose of language is to convey meaning. As long as doctors understand the meanings of the words and phrases they use (which I certainly hope they do!), it does not really matter where those words come from etymologically. Words derived from Greek and Latin are every bit as useful as words derived from Germanic roots.The only possible benefit that using words in medicine derived from English roots rather than Greek or Latin ones might bring would be that medical terminology might seem more transparent to the average layperson. The problem is that medicine is such a highly specialized field requiring highly specialized words with specific definitions that, often times, even if medical terms did come from English, their medical definitions might be very different from their definitions as ordinary people are accustomed to using them.This question actually reminds me of an amusing anecdote, which I think may help illustrate my point. Way back in the Late Middle Ages when people were speaking Middle English, there was an English bishop and amateur linguist named Reginald Pecock (lived c. 1395– c. 1461). The good Bishop Pecock seems to have been greatly distressed by the introduction of so many Latin and French words into the English language, so he invented a number of words derived from native English words to replace words of Latin derivation with the same definitions.The problem is that Reginald Pecock’s words were… well, kind of ridiculous-sounding, even to people back then. They were coined in almost exactly the same fashion as Modern German Komposita. For instance, as a substitute for the Latin-derived word “impenetrable,” Pecock suggested that people should instead say “ungothroughsome.” As a substitute for the Latin-derived word “inconceivable,” Pecock suggested that people should instead say “nottobethoughtuponable.”As you can probably guess, Pecock’s perfectly Germanic proposals for new words did not exactly become popular. I do not know about everyone else, but I rarely ever see memes of Wallace Shawn dressed as Vizzini with the caption in big, white lettering: “NOTTOBETHOUGHTUPONABLE!” (Although I must admit that I personally like to occasionally use the words “ungothroughsome” and “nottobethoughtuponable” just for my own amusement.)ABOVE: Stained glass window from Chichester Cathedral depicting (from left to right) Reginald Pecock, Ralph Luffa, and Saint Wilfrid