Turfing

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Carmen Areola from Carlsbad.

Hi, Carmen.

Hi, Carmen.

How are you doing?

Good.

What’s up?

Well, I’m a physician, and my husband is not.

And I think in the last 22 years of marriage, I’ve used this word two or three times.

And when I use it, I understand it to be one thing, and it’s full of all kinds of connotations.

And the word is turf, and it’s referring to patients.

So I say, you know, I had a certain patient who I found problematic, and I TERFed them to a specialist.

I was a family practitioner.

Now I’m in occupational medicine.

And so when I transfer patients, I usually use the word transfer.

But if I use the word TERF, my physician friends all know what I’m talking about.

My husband doesn’t.

And the connotation is usually that I’m removing a problem patient and that the receiving physician is in a worse position than me.

You’re getting rid of your bad clients?

Right.

And so anyway, my husband was saying, well, what’s the source of the word?

And the thing that I had come up with, and I didn’t know if it had anything to do with it,

Was like kind of military 19th century where people were being turfed off of ships,

Like the colonel would throw him out onto the turf.

That’s it. That’s exactly it, Doctor. It’s exactly that.

And it’s not just from the military or naval usage.

Everyday language is, well, you can turf somebody out of a pub, for example.

It definitely comes from the UK.

1880s is about as earliest as we can find it.

It’s probably earlier.

And it is literally to toss somebody with prejudice out of the place and onto the ground.

Like kick them to the curb, sort of.

Yeah, kick them to the curb, exactly.

It became figurative really fast.

And it’s just a way of demonstrating, as you said, that you’ve got some kind of problem with this person and they need to get out of the place.

You need them to get out of the place, right?

With a patient, I could see how they were uncooperative or disruptive or causing disturbance in the waiting room or that sort of thing.

So you’ve got to turf them out.

Or they just, you know, sometimes it’s a personality conflict, right?

Right.

I just, I was kind of shocked that that was actually what I was saying when I was using the word.

I mean, language, great.

Because I didn’t think of, you know, because I see some of the most polite, you know, little doctors who use the word.

And I think that we’d all be shocked if we knew that that’s what we were actually saying.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

If that’s where the word came from.

But you can rest easy.

There’s no problem with this, really.

The history of the word isn’t something that you have to hang on to.

It doesn’t necessarily have to guide the connotations and the subtext of where you’re putting it to work, right?

If you’ve somehow ameliorated the word, as they say, that is, made it a little less negative in your own usage, that’s fine too.

And I noticed that you kept saying it without out.

Historically and traditionally, the expression is turf out, and you were talking about just turfing somebody.

And that shows another kind of transformation.

And so you transformed the form of the expression as well as the connotations of the expression,

And that’s perfectly natural and okay.

So you’re not saying anything bad if you’re using it,

Although the subtext is definitely necessary there, right?

Right.

So, Carmen, feel free to go ahead and use TERF.

Okay.

I will not use TERF out.

No.

I mean, you could, but you could.

But TERF is totally cool, and thank you for sharing that word with us.

It’s pretty interesting to get inside the language of a profession

And find out what they say and why they say it.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling, Doctor.

Bye-bye.

Well, we love hearing about your language from your profession, your career, your workplace,

Those disputes that you have with your boss.

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