{"id":458,"date":"2018-06-13T21:58:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=458"},"modified":"2018-06-13T22:07:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T02:07:53","slug":"word-of-the-week-efficacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/06\/13\/word-of-the-week-efficacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Efficacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/06\/Q-marks.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-462\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/06\/Q-marks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a>Brian Krach, enrolled in the Paralegal Studies Program of our School of Professional and Continuing Studies, nominated our word this week:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is certainly familiar to me as a reference to medical trials; however, I was listening to a podcast where Jerry Muller, Professor of History at Catholic University, was a guest. He made the following statement:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Its not that I deny the problem, its that I am skeptical of the efficacy of the proposed solution.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note the fine-grained level of meaning in Professor Muller&#8217;s statement. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/59736?redirectedFrom=Efficacy&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED Online<\/a> provides a concise entry, with our earliest usage cited as 1527. The first definition, &#8220;the power or capacity to produce effects&#8221; shows that not all solutions and not all medicines, however well intended they may be, are guaranteed to be efficacious for a particular problem.<\/p>\n<p>Peruse the OED entry to see a few obsolete definitions, all about effects, one coming from John Locke. One aside: As I continue to look at the etymology of our Words of the Week, I wonder what happened in the 15th and 16th Centuries to give us the first recorded uses of so many words. Then I come up with a two-part answer: &#8220;Gutenberg&#8221; and &#8220;Renaissance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This blog will continue all summer, so nominate a word by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Krach, enrolled in the Paralegal Studies Program of our School of Professional and Continuing Studies, nominated our word this week: It is certainly familiar to me as a reference to medical trials; however, I was listening to a podcast where Jerry Muller, Professor of History at Catholic University, was a guest. He made the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/06\/13\/word-of-the-week-efficacy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Efficacy<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-7o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","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=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}