On our Facebook group someone asked, “Does anyone else get frustrated by the second p in apoptosis?” Now you know there’s a second p in apoptosis, which of course you already knew is also known as programmed cell death. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Second “P” in Apoptosis”
Sometimes the posts on our Facebook group really crack me up.
There was one the other day that went, does anyone else get frustrated when people pronounce the second P in apoptosis? Sigh. And everyone else is like, what does that mean? That’s like cell death, isn’t it? You knew that to begin with? It used to come up in my… No. Oh, no, you didn’t. Nope, seriously. No. Even before… Yes. What? It used to come up all the time… All the time. All the time in my word hunting because it’s often defined by the writer because it’s related to cancer research where you need cells to kill themselves when their DNA is bad. So they talk about forced apoptosis.
Well, yeah. I was going to read this whole definition that I had to look up. There’s a reason there’s two of us. It’s like two parents in a family. Really? Isn’t that… It’s the overlap between the two roles that really does the job, right? Our kid is kind of funny looking. But, you know, the thing is, when I looked it up, and since you’ve already given the definition, it’s also known as programmed cell death. Programmed cell death. There we go.
And the punchline is that in the American Heritage Dictionary, it gives both pronunciations. It’s spelled A-P-O-P-T-O-S-I-S. But the P-T-O is related to tomaine. Isn’t tomaine poisoning? Yeah, from Greek for fall, I believe. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so you can pronounce the P or not, but it just, it makes me laugh. Because he said it in such a way that people usually list the word that you’ve probably heard of before, but now he’s got this word that people are like, what? Yes. Wait, what circles are you traveling in, doctor?
Yeah, so no, it doesn’t bother me when people pronounce it that way. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.
