34
Word meaning health-related? (self.nostupidquestions)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by DragonWasabi to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

I want to say something like this:

"These products are found to be healthfully risky."

"These products are found to be healthily risky."

"These products are found to be risky health-wise."

"These products are found to be medically risky."

Unfortunately "healthfully" and "healthily" seem to only be used in positive contexts, relating to good health rather than just to health/degree or nature of health in general. As a result, used like this it sounds like an oxymoron/contradiction.

"Medically" sounds too formal and also sounds more specifically focused on the risk of complicating other medical issues than about overall heath.

"Health-wise" is ok but it makes it difficult to combine other aspects into the same sentence, for example: "These products were found to be environmentally, economically, and 'healthfully' risky".

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] AngryHippy@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

People are fixated on common usage because it's common, and therefore, by definition, most likely to be unambiguously understood by the largest number of speakers.

The rest of this is in the spirit of modern linguistic nerdiness:

If there is a common word, it should be preferred over uncommon words simply for ease of communication. It is much more common in the English speaking world to say "a tour bus" for a bus that goes around a city near the sights to be seen, and while "a touristic bus" might be a perfectly acceptable synonym, it is less common.

The same holds for "salubrious". While by dictionary standards it might be the best option, it isn't that common, and most people would say "healthiness" or "wholesomeness" for salubridad and "sanitariness" or "healthfulness" for sanidad.

Source: USian immigrant to Spain married to a filología inglesa / translator

[-] AngryHippy@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Another reason that English speakers talk about common usage is the ridiculous number of words in the language:

The RAE contains something like 93k words, including all the americanismos.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains roughly 470k words, and estimates that only 170k of those are in common current usage. So there are VASTLY more words in the English dictionary than most English speakers have ever even heard, much less could use properly. I didn't know that the word touristic existed in English until I i moved to Spain, for instance.

So for English speakers, getting down to the 100k or so most used words means ignoring 80% of our dictionary. So when we say something isn't common usage we really mean something between "no one has used that word in 60 years" and "I had to go look up if that even WAS an English word".

[-] 3laws@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

over uncommon words simply for ease of communication

This is pretty accurate, however we are not considering context, which is very important, it (context) defines what's common and what's not. AFAIK healthiness may not even be common in OPs case giving their hesitation to use it in the first place, I'd also argue that "salubrious" is less ambiguous. BUT, precedents are also relevant and "health benefits/risks" have a huge precedent in this case.

USian

Ah I see, a man of culture. I personally like Statetian more eve tho it also applies for my country the United States of Mexico.

filología

I think you meant filologa(?)

this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
34 points (92.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35868 readers
318 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS