I work as a medical transcriptionist and wanted to document a phrase a doctor used - He said per orum. There was discussion in our office about this but we cannot document this phrase. Can someone point me to a reference please. Thank you.
Hi Gail! Thank you for taking the time to answer. I followed the link and see per orum. The only problem is that we need a dictionary-type reference however, I cannot document this in my usual places and wondered if anyone knew of a Latin reference site that I could go to for documentation.
Thank you again for answering and making me feel welcome. :)
Hi Gail - Sadly I found only that one as well. Do you know if that is a reliable source. I wonder why I can find nothing else to document this??? What can I do better?
You might not see lots of results turned out with the term "*per orum" because this is a corrupted form of "per orem" (though + mouth [singular accusative of "os, or-is"]). I have found an entry NPO in another dictionary, which explained it as "nihil per orem [nothing by mouth]." Because nihil means nothing, it is pretty obvious per orem is "by/though/via the mouth."
Warning: Personal Rant Full of Self-Righteous Indignation Ahead;
Orum is a forgery by descedents of barbarians who loved nothing of civilisation including Latin. This is a mistake that no native Latin speaker would have spared scorn for. If I had that magic wand, I would blot orum out of history. [Here endeth the Rant]
More objectively and calmly, the Latin preposition per requires the noun X that it precedes to assume accusative case (similar to objective of English) if the whole phrase is to mean "through X." The accusative of os, Latin word for "mouth," is normatively orem and orum is simply non-existent.
The false accusative orum, however, comes very tempting because -um accusative is part of an easier conjugation (paradigm to change noun forms according to cases). I am not an expert on the history of Latin but os might have acquired an alternative accusative orum at some point in the period from the collapse of the Empire to the birth of Romance languages. Or, maybe the history of orum is so short that one can only trace it back to a medieval or modern doctor who coined the term with only some shaky knowledge of Latin. Either way, now that it has found its way to several websites, one must give credit to per orum not as a Latin phrase but as a modern terminology circulated in English speaking culture as a co-opted Latinate word.
How kind you all are…...I live in the world of medical transcription which tends to be very repetitive (although we would like to think that we are all unique individuals) in terms of word usage. My experience carries me through most times and I spend little time on the research end. I am grateful however to have stumbled across this site and will come back to participate as time allows. Thank you again.
Swedish doctors don’t bother with correct Latin. When they write po, they think [I]per os[/I] (yes!). Translated into hybrid Swedish, it becomes the adverb ‘peroralt’ (orally).
Normal practice for prescriptions was to just end with a full stop where Latin inflections are belived to start, for example when accusatives (?) for quantities should be used, but just a few years ago, it was ordered that physicians use Swedish to the greatest possible extent on prescriptions. They probably try to use Swedish when dictating as well, as the probability approaches 1 that not a single transcriptionist has learned Latin or Greek.
Plesae stay in touch with us, Zelda. I work (when I work) as a medical translator, and I might need help from you, especially when it comes to abbreviations.
Dictionary.com lists per os as the correct Latin form.
Interestingly, the Latin word os did not survive as the word for "mouth" in any of its daughter languages. Spanish boca, Italian bocca and French bouche all come from another Latin word , bucca meaning "cheek". Romanian gurã "mouth" came from a Latin word gula which originally meant ‘throat"
English has some slang words for mouth too like "chops", "trap", "yap" and "kisser". Centuries from now, anyone of them could become the new word for "mouth" in some of its descendants. :)
Interestingly, the Latin word os did not survive as the word for "mouth" in any of its daughter languages. Spanish boca, Italian bocca and French bouche all come from another Latin word , bucca meaning "cheek". Romanian gurã "mouth" came from a Latin word gula which originally meant ‘throat"
English has some slang words for mouth too like "chops", "trap", "yap" and "kisser". Centuries from now, anyone of them could become the new word for "mouth" in some of its descendants.
Brian, how does this fit with the theory you posted that basic sound/meaning associations are transmitted genetically?
-gailr
Simply look up something like"Genetics and human speech" or "Relationship between language and genetics" in Google and you will find relevant articles and most of the latest research. If scientists hand found absolutely no links between the two, these articles would not exist.
To finally settle this matter after reading every part of the thread, the correct medical term is:
Nulla Per Os
Nulla also means nothing.
Furthermore, the word "Os" in Latin is a neuter noun. The accusative of all neuter nouns has exactly the same form as the nominative. Therefore, "os" follows "per". Orem and Orum are both incorrect.
