Friday, 8 February 2008

pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)

I just read an article in c’t magazine about ergonomic mouses and alternative input devices such as trackballs and touchpads, and came across this bit:

Allein die Rotatorenmanschette, also das Muskel-Sehnen-Paket, das den Arm im Schulter-Kugelgelenk hält, kann an vielen verschiedenen Stellen lädiert sein. Jede dieser Läsionen wird Schmerzen bei einem anderen Bewegungsablauf hervorrufen.

I had a pause for a moment when I read that—then it dawned on me that "lädiert" and "Läsionen" are almost certainly related etymologically.

Again, an insight I had never had before, especially since the words belongs to two different registers. "Lädiert", for me, is a fairly informal, even jocular, word meaning, more or less, "damaged" (but not completely broken or unusable), and about as non-specific. I might use it to describe the state of a parcel I received, for example.

"Läsion" ("lesion" in English), on the other hand, is a fairly formal word, part of medical jargon, and one I'd only expect to hear in a medical/anatomical context—not the kind of damage I would think of immediately when hearing "lädiert".

So presumably, there's also a technical meaning of "lädiert", which subsequently (I suppose) led to the informal, unspecific meaning that I knew.

Fascinating.

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pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)
Philip Newton

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