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11 responses to “Sense, Missense, and Nonsense: A Word Nerd’s Freewheeling Take On The Vocabulary of Genetics

  1. Elena Strait

    Another great one, Robert!
    And I’ll never again be annoyed when someone refers to me as a “genetics counselor”

  2. I have to second Elena. I was always annoyed when I saw “genetics counselor”, but I may need to embrace it now. Very entertaining (and educational) read! Thanks!

  3. Heidi Beaver

    My nomination for the Bronze prize for insensitive pregnancy related term: elderly primigravida. Sounds like an 80 year old is pregnant. Oddly, in my first job we had diagnoses of ama and apa until the boss turned forty – it then changed to “paternal age X” but we were still stuck with ama!
    In re “genetics counselor” I have always had issue with the counselor part, with the nondirectiveness and preconceived notions of counseling. I have always felt it was a misnomer and “educator” may be a more appropriate moniker.

  4. I love it, Bob. I’ve long held a similar opinion about the word “antique.” An antiques dealer sells old stuff, but an antique dealer IS old stuff. And an antique show would be a great science fiction plot, where Satan lures unsuspecting buyers into a showroom where they are condemned to wander the aisles, inspecting the merchandise of antique dealers for 100 years or more.

  5. In South Africa, the genetic services division of the Dept of Health developed a new career track in the 1970s-80s for genetic(s) nurses. See PIMD: 245034. (Now they have genetic counselors as well, but nurses were their first choice, back then.)
    But! in South Africa, a “nurse” was still in training, whereas a “sister” was a qualified nurse. (Not a nun but a nurse, with Rank.)
    Genetic(s) counselors are sooo much easier, semantically, than either genetic sisters or genetics sisters (which sound like identical sisters anyway). In Afrikaans: genetiese susters vs. genetika susters.
    Sarina (Lemkus) Kopinsky, MS, CGC


    My mother wrote me to say how much she liked this one, Bob!

    I agree that humans with distinct cell lines should not be called chimaera unless one of the aforementioned cell lines is derived from, say, a goat. And then there may be bigger questions to answer than, “gee, what should we call this?” (a human/goat? perhaps a sandusky? is that over the line?)

    Also, I second some of the above commentators on the elderly primagravida tag. You might have to be a woman to grasp the full offensiveness of that one. Which you, plainly, are not.

  7. How about “Bad Obstetric History” for someone who has a history of recurrent miscarriages? I was pretty shocked when I heard it being used the first time…

  8. Pingback: Guest Post: Genetic Counseling Is Like A Soap Opera, by Laila Rhee Morris | The DNA Exchange

  9. Pingback: Questioning the “genetic counselor” professional title | The DNA Exchange

  10. Pingback: Euphemisms, Chucklers, Pet Peeves, And Wincers: Thoughts On Our Professional Vocabulary | The DNA Exchange

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