Wikipedia tells me that rotovirus and its kin are often referred to as "stomach flu"

[conuly]

This gives me flashbacks to 12th grade health class (first time around). I told you about that, I really disliked the teacher? This had a bit of a magnifying effect - the less I liked him, the more irritating I found him, and the more he irritated me, the less I liked him.

The guy used to harp on a few favorite subjects, and one of those was the phrase "stomach flu". As he put it, the flu is a respiratory illness, and there's no such thing as stomach flu.

But here's what I'm thinking. If I'm sick, and I say I have the stomach flu, and you know what I mean, and I know what I mean, and my doctor knows what I mean and is able to give me appropriate medical advice based on that, doesn't it follow that there is such a thing as "stomach flu", even if it only exists as an idea in our heads*?

I mean, sure, it's not the same as flu flu, but seriously. If I can take something that grows in the dirt and call it a "peanut" while being totally aware that it is neither a pea, nor a nut, and expect that the whole world** will understand me and not quibble over my language, I think we can all agree*** that the phrase "stomach flu" means a specific group of symptoms. And as long as we've achieved the ultimate goal of communication, does it really matter what we call it? I'd rather say "stomach flu" and have everybody understand me than say "rotovirus" and only have doctors understand me.

*<sub>By all this "idea in our heads" talk, I mean to say that unicorns kinda exist because we can talk about unicorns and we all share the same basic images of unicorns, even though you can't go out and capture a unicorn in the wild since they don't happen to exist there****.

**That is, the whole world that I care about talking to.

***When I say "can all agree" I do not mean, of course, that we do all agree. I know one health teacher who would probably vehemently disagree, of course, but he's not part of the whole world that I care about talking to ;)

****Unless of course they do and nobody has ever seen one, nor seen any evidence for them. Lack of proof is not proof of lack, etc. etc. etc. It is very unlikely that there is such a thing as unicorns, outside of our minds and language, but logically, I don't see how you can really *prove* they aren't there. Kinda like God, yes.</sub>

Comments

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

The current Wikipedia edit shows no evidence of "food poisoning", and "stomach flu" has been deëmphasised with no pejorative mention of slang. So for now WP agrees with you on food poisoning enough to remove it, and with conuly on "stomach flu" enough to think it needed no qualifiers and was simply a common name, however technically inaccurate. I love vox populi in action ;)

Speaking of collective action editing wikipedia articles almost as fast as people can complain about them, the reason I'm commenting on this a month and a half late is that conuly's original post got me to make some changes to the peanut article, and I just remembered her role in this while reverting some vandalism. Remember, the time it takes to say one disagrees with something on wikipedia is the same it takes to edit an article or make a comment in the Talk section! ;)

[conuly]

And the time it takes to keep it edited, how long is that?