{"id":1606,"date":"2021-11-29T09:44:55","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T14:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2021-11-29T10:31:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T15:31:15","slug":"word-of-the-week-comorbidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2021\/11\/29\/word-of-the-week-comorbidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Comorbidity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/11\/comorbidity.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1607\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/11\/comorbidity-300x169.jpeg\" alt=\"Comorbidity image\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/11\/comorbidity-300x169.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/11\/comorbidity.jpeg 501w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Professor Joe Hoyle sends us another word, albeit one better suited to Halloween than Thanksgiving. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/261449?redirectedFrom=comorbidity&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED&#8217;s definition<\/a> is brief, &#8220;the coexistence of two or more diseases, disorders, or pathological processes in one individual.&#8221; First instance they track? 1967, making our word a neologism. These disorders can be psychological or neurological, our graphic shows (creative commons <a href=\"https:\/\/e-medjournal.com\/index.php\/psp\/article\/view\/264\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">licensed<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The word has deep roots, however; &#8220;morbid&#8221; goes back centuries, and we associate it with death. Yet our Word of the Week does not imply death; many of us live with diseases for years, even decades. My doctor recently told me about an ailment that, thankfully, I do not have. With this particular disease men my age &#8220;die with it, not from it.&#8221; It&#8217;s often a comorbidity with other disorders.<\/p>\n<p>Our word gets used metaphorically, these days. Professor Hoyle cited an article about a particularly detestable former American leader, where the author claimed that he &#8220;was a comorbidity.&#8221; I think the claim implies that this rascal carries all the illnesses besetting our the nation: xenophobia, toxic nostalgia, avarice, misogyny, anti-scientific thinking, cronyism, militarism, racism. In short, that man is a walking, bloviating cluster of societal diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Pleasant stuff, even in a pandemic.\u00a0 Stay well, folks. Nation. Avoid comorbidities if you can.<\/p>\n<p>Please send interesting\u00a0 (or morbid) words and metaphors and send them to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Joe Hoyle sends us another word, albeit one better suited to Halloween than Thanksgiving. The OED&#8217;s definition is brief, &#8220;the coexistence of two or more diseases, disorders, or pathological processes in one individual.&#8221; First instance they track? 1967, making our word a neologism. These disorders can be psychological or neurological, our graphic shows (creative &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2021\/11\/29\/word-of-the-week-comorbidity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Comorbidity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87399,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-pU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}