Honk
n.— «If that doesn’t control their pain, we (perhaps uncharitably) say they “failed two rounds.” When admitting such a “sickler,” we have to decide whether to send them to “Gens,” the general medicine service, or “Honk,” the hematology-oncology service. (People with heart problems, of course, go to “Cards.”)» —“Doctors’ Lingo That Leaves You Speechless” by Jenny Blair Hartford Courant (Connecticut) May 28, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...
A physician in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, shares some of the vocabulary of his patients from Appalachia. There, a misery is anything painful, such as a misery in my jaw if they have a painful tooth or a misery in my back if they have lumbar pain...