{"id":6612,"date":"2024-03-17T00:53:13","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T00:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6612"},"modified":"2024-03-17T00:54:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T00:54:48","slug":"word-of-the-day-querulous-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/03\/17\/word-of-the-day-querulous-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Querulous"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is querulous<\/em>, which can be pronounced either \/\u02c8kw\u025br \u0259 l\u0259s\/ or \/\u02c8kw\u025br y\u0259 l\u0259s\/, though honestly I would pronounce it the second way, with the \/y\u0259\/. Just to clarify, the \u0259 is what we call a schwa; it is an unstressed central vowel, the sound we usually hear when someone commits a vocalized pause (uh). So with \/y\u0259\/, we have the sound we hear when someone says \u201cWhat\u2019s it to ya?\u201d Querulous<\/em> means \u201cfull of complaints; complaining\u201d or \u201ccharacterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish,\u201d as in \u201ca querulous attitude\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/querulous<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merriam-Webster says, \u201cSomeone described as querulous is constantly or habitually complaining. Querulous<\/em> can also be used synonymously with fretful<\/em> or whining<\/em> when describing something, such as a person’s tone of voice\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/word-of-the-day<\/a>). The website then explains, \u201cEnglish speakers have called fretful whiners querulous<\/em> since late medieval times. The Middle English form of the word, querelose<\/em>, was an adaptation of the Latin adjective, querulus<\/em>, which in turn evolved from the Latin verb queri<\/em>, meaning \u2018to complain.\u2019 Queri<\/em> is also an ancestor of the English words quarrel<\/u><\/em> and quarrelsome<\/em>, but it isn’t an ancestor of the noun query<\/em>, meaning \u2018question.\u2019 No need to complain that we’re being coy; we’re happy to let you know that query<\/em> descends from the Latin verb quaerere<\/em>, meaning \u2018to ask\u2019\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Etymonline says that querulous entered the English language \u201cc. 1400, querelous<\/em>, from Old French querelos<\/em> \u2018quarrelsome, argumentative\u2019 and directly from Late Latin querulosus<\/em>, from Latin querulus<\/em> \u2018full of complaints, complaining,\u2019 from queri<\/em> \u2018to complain,\u2019 from Proto-Italic *kwese<\/em>-, of uncertain etymology, perhaps, via the notion of \u2018to sigh,\u2019 from a PIE root *kues<\/em>– \u2018to hiss\u2019 (source also of Sanskrit svasiti<\/em> \u2018to hiss, snort\u2019), which is not very compelling, but no better etymology has been offered\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=querulous<\/a>). In other words, if you are expecting absolute certainty from linguistics, you\u2019re going to be disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1867, Joseph Lister published a paper \u201cOn a New Method of Treating Compound Fracture, Absess, Etc., with Observations on the Condition of Suppuration,\u201d according to On This Day (https:\/\/www.onthisday.com\/events\/march\/16<\/a>). I have actually March 10 on another website, and Wikipedia says that the paper was published in five installments, but we\u2019ll go with today\u2019s date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph Lister was a medical doctor and a researcher, and he is in good measure responsible for the ability of surgeons today to do what they do. He developed a system for cleaning wounds that was referred to as antiseptic surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Dennis Pitt and Jean-Michel Aubin, Lister changed the world of surgery. \u201cThe world of surgery when Lister began his practice was primitive by our standards. Although Fracastoro of Verona in 1546 theorized that small germs could cause contagious diseases, no one associated them with wound infections. Bed linen and laboratory coats were not washed and surgical instruments were only cleaned before they were put away for storage. The same probe was used for the wounds of all patients during rounds to look for pockets of undrained pus. Suppuration and laudable pus were considered part of normal healing. Operative procedures were only occasionally performed in the average surgeon\u2019s practice,5 and there was talk of banning all surgery from hospitals because of septic complications. Sir J.E. Erichsen, a future President of the Royal College of Surgeons, stated \u2018The abdomen, chest and brain will forever be closed to operations by a wise and humane surgeon.\u2019 Semmelweis\u2019 work on puerperal fever was unknown\u201d (https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3468637\/<\/a>). You may remember that I talked about Semmelweis on February 28, when the word of the day was iatrogenic<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLister\u2019s great intellectual breakthrough came when, on the advice of Thomas Anderson, a Glasgow professor of chemistry, he read Pasteur\u2019s papers, Recherches sur la putrefaction<\/em>, and postulated that the same process causing fermentation was involved with wound sepsis\u201d (ibid.). From this hypothesis, he began using a form of carbolic acid, known as creosote, to keep wounds free of infection. His first attempt was on an 11-year-old boy. \u201cFrom 1865 to 1867, Lister treated 11 more cases of compound fractures, nine of which remained free of infection, one of which needed amputation, and one in which the patient died due to secondary hemorrhage\u201d (ibid.). It was the results of those experiments that Lister published in The Lancet<\/em> in 1867.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carbolic acid is actually dangerous to human tissue, so it had to be used very carefully. During his time, he gradually diluted the solution more and more. And eventually his antiseptic approach would be replaced by antibiotics to keep wounds free of infection. But he did have a role in making the germ theory of disease accepted in the medical community. He was accused of plagiarizing the work of a French scientist. The editor of The Lancet invited doctors and researchers to try Lister\u2019s method and report their results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But with every advance, there are those whose attitude to the changes can only be described as querulous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today is one of the iterations of Joseph Lister\u2019s carbolic acid spray machine. And by the way, to answer the question that I know is foremost in your minds, Listerine was not invented by Joseph Lister. It was invented in 1879 by a St. Louis, Missouri, chemist named Joseph Lawrence. However, Lawrence did name the antiseptic mouthwash after Joseph Lister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day is querulous, which can be pronounced either \/\u02c8kw\u025br \u0259 l\u0259s\/ or \/\u02c8kw\u025br y\u0259 l\u0259s\/, though honestly I would pronounce it the second way, with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,617,284,616],"class_list":["post-6612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-joseph-lister","tag-linguistics","tag-querulous","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6614,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6612\/revisions\/6614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}