These are new words or phrases that have caught my eye. My definition of a new word is one which is not in the Macquarie Dictionary online.
Some words seem to have more significance than others in terms of reflecting changes in the Australian culture, so I will give each word a Zeitgeist rating (ZG) within a range of 1-10.
If you disagree with the rating that I give, please argue your case in the comment field provided.
I would love you to contact me if you have made any new word discoveries of your own.
A UCC (Urgent Care Clinic) deals with illnesses, medical conditions and accidents that are not life-threatening and do not require an ambulance to take the patient directly to hospital, but are serious enough to require immediate attention.
ZG: 7
Government advertising is slowly spreading the word about UCCs so in time we should all be familiar with them.
Read MoreThere have been so many cases of food poisoning from fried rice that the dish has given its name to the botulism acquired from incorrect storage of cooked rice.
ZG: 4
Most of us have other ways of describing this condition.
Read MoreThis is syndrome that has come into prominence because there is a similarity with the symptoms of long COVID. The acronym stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
ZG: 4
A term of the medical world which has surfaced because of the interest in long COVID.
Read MoreThis is slightly misleading as a name because it gives the impression that the flu virus is somehow targeting young children which it isn’t. But more young children are getting the flu because the vaccination rate is so low this year.
ZG: 5
This one is picking up in frequency as winter progresses and there is a push for more vaccinations.
Read MoreThis is usually abbreviated to CFT. It is a treatment that starts with physiotherapy — it was devised by the Professor of Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy at Curtin University, Dr Peter O’Sullivan.
ZG: 7
For the many people suffering from lower back pain this is good news. Undoubtedly, like many medical terms it will move from the long form to the abbreviated CFT very rapidly.
Read MoreA room that is a total mess — clothes everywhere, bed unmade, last night’s dinner still on the floor — is an indicator that the inhabitant of the room is suffering severe depression.
ZG: 6
Many more people than usual experienced a depression room during COVID so the awareness of the depression room and how to climb out of it is greater.
Read MoreFirst we had antibiotics. Then in the 1950s we learned about probiotics (the opposite of antibiotics) which encouraged certain microorganisms in the gut. We also had prebiotics which were foods that were not digested in the gut but which work in conjunction with the probiotics.Now we are focusing our attention on the postbiotics which are the molecules produced after the prebiotics and probiotics have done their work.
ZG: 5
We are all concerned with our inner health and anxious to take the latest thing.
Read MoreObesogen is a backformation from obesogenic, a relatively recent word meaning ‘tending to cause obesity’. In the 1980s this was an adjective mostly applied to diets and unhealthy living styles. The obesogen is the name given to a chemical that promotes weight gain by increasing the activity of cells that store fat or, alternatively, inhibiting their ability to release that store as energy.
ZG: 9
This is a rather depressing view of the world we have created that is now making us obese.
Read MoreThe Ro is the reproduction number or measure of how infectious a disease is in a population which has no resistance to it, which is why we are just hearing about it now.
ZG: 5
This is a specialist term but it is being used in mainstream communications from specialists so we are becoming more familiar with it.
Read MoreThis is miniature brain created in a laboratory by taking stem cells from the body which then develop functioning neural networks. The formal name for a mini-brain is a cerebral organoid, an organoid being an artificial organ grown in vitro.
ZG: 6
This is probably the stuff of research articles at the moment but as as mini-brains progress the general public may take a keener interest.
Read MoreResearchers are claiming that they have found a new organ in the body, a network of collagen with small holes in it filled with fluid.
ZG: 4
Interesting as it is, it will take a while for us to become as familiar with the interstitium as we are we other organs of the body.
Read MoreThe chemical restraint is a psychotropic drug or a psychopharmacologic agent now commonly used in the care of the elderly, particularly, those suffering from dementia.
ZG: 8
There are no immediate solutions being offered to the problems occurring in the care of the aged in Australia so we can expect to hear more about the use fo chemical restraints in the future.
Read MoreLooping is process for automatically regulating insulin delivery from a pump, using an app which reads a glucose level monitor and then adjusts the supply of insulin in accordance with the changing readings.
ZG: 4
This is a term which is known to a relatively small group of people. It has surfaced because of the particular difficulty they are in.
Read MoreThis is a pattern of behaviour exhibited by someone who wishes to dominate another person, usually one in a relationship with them.
ZG: 6
On the one hand it is good that we are recognising the subtleties of abuse and coming up with terms to identify them. On the other hand it does unfortunately seem to be a growth area of the language.
Read MoreThis is described as a revolutionary new method for treating cancer in which the patient’s own T-cell lymphocytes (found in the immune system) are harvested and genetically re-engineered.
ZG: 4
A medical word but one that may get wider currency if it proves to be a success.
Read MoreThe liquid biopsy has the advantage that the sample is a blood sample, so fairly easy to extract.
ZG: 3
A medical term but one that could be of considerable importance to some people.
Read MoreWe would like to hope that all medicine combines an accurate diagnosis with an effective treatment, so we need to explain what precisely is meant by the term precision medicine.
ZG: 8
This will transform medical practice of the future.
Read MoreI think this is an instance of an Australian TV scriptwriter pulling in an Americanism as a bit of colloquial bling.
ZG: 1
Read MoreThis is a new branch of science which combines biology and genetic engineering to create completely new artificial products.
ZG: 6
A brave new world indeed! But not yet a term that we all recognise.
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