From today, nobody will ever again suffer from the annoying and temporary condition known as the hiccups, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
That is because they have suddenly decided to name them after their cause rather than the symptom, in line with current medical naming conventions.
“Our lead researchers all agree that it makes more sense to call this condition Temporary Spastic Diaphragm, or TSD for short,” a WHO spokesperson explained. “After all, we don’t call measles ‘red, spotty rash,’ and we don’t call dyslexia ‘letter confusion’ either.”
When asked if this renaming might cause confusion, the WHO spokesperson responded with, “Possibly, but it doesn’t matter if it does because we don’t mind causing confusion. Why do you think we keep changing our minds about whether fresh, frozen, or canned foods are the highest in nutrition?”
So there you have it. The next time a teacher hears one of their pupils being called a ‘spakker’ by another, they will have to first check that the victim doesn’t have TSD before making the decision whether to tell off the abuser for using derogatory language.
This is a huge improvement. I have been trying for years to figure out what the acronym HICCUP stands for. I’ve also trying piecing together word origins for it. In Latin, “hic” means “this”, but then “cup” makes no sense. I’ve tried Greek, Sanskrit and other languages as well, but it seems to have no Indo-European origin at all. Anything else would be sheer speculation.
I find that the new name restores a lot of clarity. Thank you!