What is the difference between 'epidemic' and 'pandemic'?
According to my Webster New Explorer Large Print Dictionary, epidemic means affecting many people at one time, and it doesn't refer just to an illness. But my Roget's Thesaurus defines epidemic as a plague, scourge, pestilence or pandemic. However, the word pandemic isn't defined in either reference book. It turns out pandemic is a medical term that is defined in Jane's medical dictionary as: widespread epidemic of disease, or widely epidemic. So it looks as if the pandemic of swine flu bearing down upon us is not just your ordinary plague, scourge, or pestilence.
Once I have a dictionary of any kind in my hands I just have to browse a bit before I can put it down, and I happened on another appropriate word, 'zoogenous' meaning 'acquired from animals, or viviparous. So we don't have any run-of-the-mill pandemic about to wipe us out, we have a 'zoogenous pandemic'. Or maybe it is a hogogenous zoogenous pandemic.
I know you were wondering about it, so I thought I would just clear that up for you.
Earlier in the day, it occurred to me that I am connected on Gather to quite a few people around the world who use the metric system. I am an insular American and I realized that since the metric system has never found a home in any part of my brain, that if I wanted to chat about the weather with a guy in India I couldn't even give him the morning temperature here in metric. So I looked in the front and back pages of my reference books for a chart of equivalents, but none were to be found. Even if I am an octogenarian and a half, it's never too late to switch over to the metric system - or is it? Guess I'll have to look it up on line.
But in my thesaurus I did run across a wonderful new word that starts with 'O'. If only someone on Gather will come up with a game to name words starting with 'O' I'm going to lay that word on them. It is osphresiophilia and it means love of smells. I have a severe case of that. I love the smells of lilacs, leather things, new books, horses, and tangerines that have been pierced all over with whole cloves. And bacon frying, or steak sprinkled with garlic powder under the broiler is good too. I even have been known to say as we were driving by a dairy or a horse farm, "Oh that smells good! It smells like home." I grew up on a farm.
My grandmother Stevenson always used to urge us kids to learn a new word every day. So there is our new word for today - osphresiophilia - the love of certain smells. I wonder how we have lived so long without it?
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Comments: 17
BTW, I've lived in a metric country for over 30 years but I still "feel" things in the English system. It's a lovely spring morning here, probably in the high 70s, but to the Japanese it's only in the teens. Wow! That's below freezing to me!
I told my son if he sees anyone with flu symptoms in his school to let the nurse and the principal know. Kids don't wash their hands often enough and when they sneeze they do it right into the air!
Thanks for the new words. I believe you should learn a new word every day too - I used to have a calendar that was a word a day. Loved that calendar.
why not? We are not the boss of the situation, it is becoming clear that the virus is Boss.
I can't wait to use this word the next time someone comments on my patchoulli!
Great post, Ruth. Will read again! Salud
This is something that I am not focusing on but it is being talked about everywhere. I'm eating lots of honey in hopes to ward it off! Have a good evening, Ruth. Salud
Because my grandmother was 14 and caring for 6 little brothers and sisters during the 1918 Flu epidemic and because the first US citizen to die in the US of this swine flu was a 22 month old child, my family is being very careful. We can't wash our hands often enough but we can try. I don't hold with the new anti-biotic, anti-viral hand wash stuff. According to some medical sites it is the use of such low grade anti-biotics that ear infections have become so medicine resistant. Only thing worse than a Pandemic is a strain of virus with no known anti-viral medication to control it.
Good hygiene is essential.
For those with the feeling that vitamin c in big doses will help with flu challenges, remember that the flower head of the dandelion contains about 1000 milligrams of vitami C.
Just pop it in your mouth - tastes fine!
Back to the woods, fields and planting
Kicking up heels, enjoying the fling
Far from the wordsmiths' panicky ranting
Scents make more sense than journalists' frenzy
But if you're concerned, yes, I recommend "C"