Word of the Day

[jasonandrew]

I highly recommend writers sign up for this service from www.dictionary.com.

Every day I wake up to learn about a new word.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 4, 2010
iatrogenic \ahy-a-truh-JEN-ik\, adjective:
A malady induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures.
Chronic insomnia thus becomes a self-perpetuating and/or iatrogenic condition as sufferers are prescribed (or acquire) hypnotics for transient sleeplessness, and then develop an ongoing problem getting to sleep without chemical aid.
-- New York Times, reader comment, April 2010
It is very common to see dogs develop iatrogenic Cushing's as a result of long term use of corticosteroids (Prednisone.)
-- www.dogforums.com

Comments

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

Having a strong vocabulary is a very good thing. I like finding the occasional word I have to look up or deduce from context. The trap writers have to avoid is using the words inappropriately or too often.

For example, take the TV series Bones (assuming it were a written story. (I love it). Bones, the egghead scientist who knows bones better than people, could throw "iatrogenic" around and be believable. However Booth, her FBI partner who is the jock who beat up the nerds in school, would never use that word unless he was mocking someone else who used it. Even though Booth might use that word, having her use half a dozen obscure or "brainy" words in a paragraph would be annoying to the reader, unless done to demonstrate how smart and out of touch she is.

If the narrator were to throw in a word like that it would pull me as the reader out of the story a bit while I tried to figure it out. This is one of my problems with reading Shakespeare. I get to reading and enjoying it but I can't get lost in the story because I keep getting pulled out by words or references I don't understand fully.

So use them, but be very careful how you do. Otherwise the reader becomes aware of the author while reading and that can kill a good story.