Brenna, a nurse in Rapid City, South Dakota, says she was on a hospital elevator full of people and when the doors opened and someone in the back was trying to get off, she piped up with One side or a leg off!, but no one understood that phrase. It...
Miranda, a nurse in Altoona, Pennsylvania, had a patient who described her hospital food as the pits, meaning it wasn’t good. The expressions the pits and in the pits arose out of 1950s college slang, and derive from the notion of smelly armpits...
Terry, a health-care worker in Traverse City, Michigan, says she and her colleagues use the term cohorting to describe the act of grouping patients with COVID-19 in designated facilities. But they’re not sure what word to use to denote reintegrating...
Katie in East Thetford, Vermont, shares NICU slang from a neonatal intensive care unit, where a doorbell is an alarm summoning a team and a Giraffe is a brand-name bed that controls heat and humidity for an infant. The PANDA Room is the Preterm and...
Noon of night is an archaism, a poetic way of saying “midnight.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Noon of Night is the Middle of the Night” I’m sure you can guess what this term means. Noon of night. So midnight? Yes. I came across...
Terry from Fort Worth uses smidge, tidge, and shimmy while helping hospital patients shift from a stretcher to an operating room bed. Smidge is a clipped form of smidgeon, probably related to Scots smitch, “a small amount.” Tidge is a recognized...
