Author Topic: Locum  (Read 2103 times)

Jacki

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Re: Locum
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2020, 03:33:36 PM »
I read Birdy's post and wrote a reply and thought I submitted but it didn't appear. Anyhow I was just saying that given that the other half of the English speaking world have heard of locum, and it is classed as rare (or uncommon) then it follows that loci should be rare too, OR, in my humble opinion and seemingly those of other forumites, the more sensible option of reclassifying LOCUM to common and LOCI to rare.
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pat

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Re: Locum
« Reply #16 on: February 26, 2020, 08:33:17 PM »
I wonder why you compare locum with loci, Jacki. Loci is the plural of locus and has nothing to do with locum so there’s no correlation between the status of locum and loci.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2020, 08:41:07 PM by pat »

Jacki

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Re: Locum
« Reply #17 on: February 27, 2020, 08:31:11 AM »
Good point. I actually did think that. Well, learnt something new again!
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Alan W

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Re: Locum
« Reply #18 on: March 09, 2020, 12:03:31 PM »
Lynne Murphy is a linguist who has written a lot about the differences between British and American English. In 2012 she included locum in a list of "untranslatables", saying

Quote
BrE locum. Someone who stands in for someone else in a professional context, particularly doctor or clergy member. This is a shortened form of locum tenens, which one does see a bit in AmE medical jargon these days (but not just locum, and not in general use).

My own researches confirm this. The News on the Web corpus shows locum usage in the UK at more than 13 times its frequency in the US. Moreover most of these US examples are from specialist medical publications, and many of them are used in the phrase locum tenens.

I suspect the word is also declining in usage in Britain, Australia, etc, because of the disappearance of single-doctor medical practices, as people have mentioned. Locum will continue to be classed as not common.
Alan Walker
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Jacki

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Re: Locum
« Reply #19 on: March 09, 2020, 06:01:26 PM »
Thanks for the update Alan - and are you going to keep LOCI as common?
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