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David Goldblatt, MD
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry New York

JAMA. 1985;254(1):54.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The words we use in medical writing, and their meanings, change with time. In "Micturition Syncope: A Reappraisal," Kapoor et al¹ used micturition to mean urination. Current editions of Webster's and the Oxford dictionary agree. A century ago, neither word, micturition or syncope, meant what it does today. Micturition, for most of its 260 years in print, was "the desire to make water; a morbid frequency in the voiding of urine." Using it for "the action of making water" was incorrect.² Syncope meant "failure of the heart's action, resulting in unconsciousness, and sometimes death"; now those who only stand and faint also have syncope. The "twenty-dollar word" has replaced the "ten-center."³

Both urination and micturition may be said to have their place. When Samuel Johnson failed to include them in his dictionary, he was left without either a conventional or a medically precise word . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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