Bad language about living longer
We have provided definitions about the four process that are taking place as we live longer and emphasise how important to use these accurately and often. There are in addition some terms that should not be used, not because the meaning is not clear but because the perpetuate the negative image and the pessimism about living longer. The terms include
Geriatric, when used as a noun
Care
This is a term that can be used as a verb or a noun and it is appropriate to care about someone or something, like the planet and climate change but care as a noun, for example ‘she needs care’ or ‘we will have to provide care’ usually means doing something for someone. We first attacked the term ‘care’ in an article in the Lancet in 1980 (1)
Of course some people do need some things to be done for them but the initial assumption should always be that the person could do something for himself, with support, the support being one, or more, of
1. Gray J.A.M. (1980)
Do we care too much for our elders?
Lancet 2; 1289-1291
Retirement
This is being rebranded as renaissance
The elderly
This term is very loosely used and as we wrote in the Guardian in 2015 (2) is a figure of speech, called metonymy, that reflects and perpetuates
prejudices about all people with a single characteristic. It is sometimes useful to generalise about people of a certain age group, to determine the music of their teenage years for example, or to tell them that there are prejudices about people in their 70s or 80s, for example the prejudice that fitness is a concept irrelevant to people in these age groups and that they should be ignored
2. The Guardian 2015
“DOWN WITH THE ELDERLY
I am now one of ‘the elderly’ and I hate it. Not being seventy,I hasten to add, I am very glad to be seventy and in reasonable health after a life punctuated by polio, acute renal failure and a myocardial infarction, but I hate the term ‘the elderly’.
The definition of a group by referral to one attribute is a figure of speech called metonymy and the danger of metonymy is recognised but still used often in healthcare when clinicians refer to patients as ‘diabetics’ or ‘epileptics’ or ‘the elderly. I am proud of a book I published in 1985 called Prevention of Disease in the Elderly but ashamed of the title because even then I disliked ‘the elderly’ but had let the term slip through, principally due to inattention. In my defence I had co-authored a book four years earlier titled, consciously but perhaps a little smugly, Our Elders
Problems result from any attempt to describe the ageing population as a single entity because of the huge age range, from 65 to 105. No one would attempt to generalise from birth to forty, or forty to eighty, so why generalise about ‘the elderly’? “
We have provided definitions about the four process that are taking place as we live longer and emphasise how important to use these accurately and often. There are in addition some terms that should not be used, not because the meaning is not clear but because the perpetuate the negative image and the pessimism about living longer. The terms include
Geriatric, when used as a noun
Care
This is a term that can be used as a verb or a noun and it is appropriate to care about someone or something, like the planet and climate change but care as a noun, for example ‘she needs care’ or ‘we will have to provide care’ usually means doing something for someone. We first attacked the term ‘care’ in an article in the Lancet in 1980 (1)
Of course some people do need some things to be done for them but the initial assumption should always be that the person could do something for himself, with support, the support being one, or more, of
- physiotherapy to regain strength and suppleness,
- encouragement and advice about how to get round an obstacle
- the provision of some aid or adaptation as advised by an occupational therapist to enable them to do so.
1. Gray J.A.M. (1980)
Do we care too much for our elders?
Lancet 2; 1289-1291
Retirement
This is being rebranded as renaissance
The elderly
This term is very loosely used and as we wrote in the Guardian in 2015 (2) is a figure of speech, called metonymy, that reflects and perpetuates
prejudices about all people with a single characteristic. It is sometimes useful to generalise about people of a certain age group, to determine the music of their teenage years for example, or to tell them that there are prejudices about people in their 70s or 80s, for example the prejudice that fitness is a concept irrelevant to people in these age groups and that they should be ignored
2. The Guardian 2015
“DOWN WITH THE ELDERLY
I am now one of ‘the elderly’ and I hate it. Not being seventy,I hasten to add, I am very glad to be seventy and in reasonable health after a life punctuated by polio, acute renal failure and a myocardial infarction, but I hate the term ‘the elderly’.
The definition of a group by referral to one attribute is a figure of speech called metonymy and the danger of metonymy is recognised but still used often in healthcare when clinicians refer to patients as ‘diabetics’ or ‘epileptics’ or ‘the elderly. I am proud of a book I published in 1985 called Prevention of Disease in the Elderly but ashamed of the title because even then I disliked ‘the elderly’ but had let the term slip through, principally due to inattention. In my defence I had co-authored a book four years earlier titled, consciously but perhaps a little smugly, Our Elders
Problems result from any attempt to describe the ageing population as a single entity because of the huge age range, from 65 to 105. No one would attempt to generalise from birth to forty, or forty to eighty, so why generalise about ‘the elderly’? “