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...
Katie in East Thetford, Vermont, shares medical slang and jargon from her work in the neonatal intensive care room at a hospital, including doorbell for “an alarm”; giraffe, “a special bed with controls for heat and humidity”; and PANDA Room, an...
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...
A Fort Worth, Texas, hospital worker says she’s forever telling her patients to move over on the gurney just a smidge or a tidge, and wants to know if they’re real words. Smidge is a shortening of smidgeon; tidge is likely a mix of tad and smidge...
Next time you’re at a hospital, listen for staffer’s code slang like suitcase sign, meaning “the patient is determined to check himself in no matter what,” or a gown sign, meaning they suspect a patient of getting ready to “elope,” that is, “to...
