The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are some of this year’s winners:
- Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
- Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
- Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
- Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
You can see all the winners at the George W. Bush “Officious Forum.”
I thought it would be fun to try and come up with with some pharma related terms. The best I could come with was:
- Adhorence: the deep hatred of advertising (compare to adherence).
I then asked members of the Pharma Marketing Online Discussion Forum to come up with some more. Here’s what they submitted so far:
DTP: Direct to Plaintiff — the art and science of creating plaintiffs with puffery enticing them to try dangerous drugs they would be better off without.(Submitted by Terry Nugent). James Gardner submitted DTC : Direct-to-Courthouse, which doesn’t follow the rules, but what the heck!
Relationslip Marketing: Establishing an initial connection with a consumer and then never doing anything meaningful with it. (Submitted by David Reim). Compare to Relationship Marketing.
Derail Aid: A tool to confuse physicians. (Submitted by David Reim). Compare to Detail Aid.
Charmaceutical: An SSRI taken by someone who thinks they have a genuine diagnosis, but in reality are simply unpleasant. (Submitted by Paul McNiven).
Byotech: A small, specialty pharmaceutical company whose stock rises paradoxically whenever they announce failed clinical trials. (Submitted by Paul McNiven).
Contrasindication: A DTC ad deliberately designed to generate controversy, so as to get aired on cable news 10 times for every paid slot. (Submitted by Paul McNiven). How about this variant: Controindication? Compare to contraindication.
Salety Study: Which proves that the drug is worth selling, whether safe or not. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).
Generich Companies: Which make plenty of $ with somebody else’s innovations. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).
Phate III: Which concludes that the drug can be sold, the fate of a certain % of the target population being left to a higher power. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).
Pharmasuitickle: An overall pleasant tingling a personal trial attorney gets when contacted by a former Vioxx patient. (Submitted by Jim Weidert). I think Jim stretched the rules a bit there. How about this variant: Pharmasuitical?
Complieance: what patients tell their doctors about whether they are taking their pills. (Submitted by Matthew Holt).
CEA: A term used to describe a ranking officer whose public utterances remind one of a pejorative or disdainful reference to a bodily part normally used to express intense disagreement with another’s expressed opinion. (Submitted by Harry Sweeney).
Antibositics: Therapies undertaken to antagonise bosses’ criticism. (Submitted by Kamran Shamsi).
Adverstising – The fine art of promoting adverse reactions through the use of realistic images of afflicted patients to target audiences consisting of physicians and consumers in a repulsive, yet memorable fashion. (Submitted by Mario Nacinovich).
That’s all for now. Feel free to add your own as a comment to this post.
