exploring "gunners"--history

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acetastic

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Hello all,
now this is a fairly random question for an essay I am writing but I wonder if anyone knows some of the sources of history behind the term "gunner"--where did it come from, when did it first appear or become popularized. Its one of those terms that just is so ingrained in our parlance and the culture of medicine. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
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Lots of people have asked this question, but I think the answer is derivatory: a "gunner" as a battle term began popular usage in WWI, when there were first tank/airmen whose sole responsibility was to shoot the large guns attached to mobile units. A "gunner" as used in class, as you well know, is really referring not just to someone who gets the top grades, but who is willing to "shoot down" a classmate/peer/colleague to get ahead. I would guess after the World Wars, when young men of a wide variety of ages and classes had access to education under the GI bills and professional schools became seriously competitive again . . . there was an integration of war terminology into the classroom/ward atmosphere. Those are just my two cents.

Edit: And consider too, that a gunner was a highly specialized position. They were either precise and skilled, or everybody on board died. When we think of gunners being egotistical, arrogant or ruthless . . . well I can imagine the real ones were too.
 
acetastic said:
Hello all,
now this is a fairly random question for an essay I am writing but I wonder if anyone knows some of the sources of history behind the term "gunner"--where did it come from, when did it first appear or become popularized. Its one of those terms that just is so ingrained in our parlance and the culture of medicine. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
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I'm pretty sure the term started in law schools (where negative/abrasive personalities exist in spades) and quickly expanded to the other professional schools (medical, dental, etc). I would guess it has a military connotation as mentioned above, or is simply derived from the phrase "I'm gunning for you". Regardless of the derivation, you don't want ot be one. It's a pejorative term.
 
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Law2Doc said:
I'm pretty sure the term started in law schools (where negative/abrasive personalities exist in spades) and quickly expanded to the other professional schools (medical, dental, etc). I would guess it has a military connotation as mentioned above, or is simply derived from the phrase "I'm gunning for you". Regardless of the derivation, you don't want ot be one. It's a pejorative term.
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You know what's interesting . . . I meet a lot of different med/law students who treat the term kind of lightly, almost jokingly. I almost never hear it these days used as a deliberate put-down . . . mostly just to tease people who talk too much in class. At least my medical school has moved away from encouraging the kind of atmosphere where people could "gun." We get points off in clerkships for answering ahead of other students.
 
Divine Furor said:
You know what's interesting . . . I meet a lot of different med/law students who treat the term kind of lightly, almost jokingly. I almost never hear it these days used as a deliberate put-down . . . mostly just to tease people who talk too much in class. At least my medical school has moved away from encouraging the kind of atmosphere where people could "gun." We get points off in clerkships for answering ahead of other students.
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Yeah, people misuse the term a lot as well -- calling someone who simply works hard and does well a "gunner", as a good natured ribbing, much as you would call someone laid back a "slacker". But in fact, it's the dude who backstabs, who compromises relationships to get ahead, who climbs to the top on the back of others. We had a dude (or dudette -- we never found out) who used to run to the library in law school and rip out the pages of texts on reserve after using them, so anybody else would have to travel to another school's library if they wanted to do the assignment. That was a good example of a gunner. In med school the gunners tend to really come out in 3rd year -- it will be the person who jumps in and snags the attending questions before you can get a word out, so you look like you know less, the person who "volunteers" you to take care of the undesirable patient because they already had one with X ailment (even though they only have two patients and you already have three), or who simply finds a way not to leave at the end of the day so you always look like you are cutting out early. While schools sometimes try to discourage this, it still occurs here and there at all med schools, and always will.
 
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But what about a student who puts in the time and effort to make the top academic grades? Are they a gunner?
 
doesn't the book house of god use the term or define it? i mean it has for almost every other medical lingo book.
 
acetastic said:
doesn't the book house of god use the term or define it? i mean it has for almost every other medical lingo book.
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The term was being used in both law and medicine long before House of God. In fact that book didn't make up any terms, it just popularized some of the ones already in use (eg GOMER).
 
Law2Doc said:
The term was being used in both law and medicine long before House of God. In fact that book didn't make up any terms, it just popularized some of the ones already in use (eg GOMER).
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Well, speaking of GOMER, where did that come from then? Thought it was House of God. But then again, you are suggesting it was used before and the book just made the term more popular.
 
badasshairday said:
Well, speaking of GOMER, where did that come from then? Thought it was House of God. But then again, you are suggesting it was used before and the book just made the term more popular.
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GOMER is just an acronym (Get Out of My Emergency Room); not sure there's really any secret history behind it, and I'm sure it's been used in the industry before House of God came out.
 
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acetastic said:
Hello all,
now this is a fairly random question for an essay I am writing but I wonder if anyone knows some of the sources of history behind the term "gunner"--where did it come from, when did it first appear or become popularized. Its one of those terms that just is so ingrained in our parlance and the culture of medicine. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Thanks for asking this question! As a word-nerd myself, I was also curious about where the term came from. I'm re-reading House of God now, and gunner's in there a lot. I think the term has evolved to be used more loosely to include super-over-achiever students who are way to eager. For example, I've often heard people talk about the "gunners who sit in the front row" of lecture.
 
I thought "gomer" usually referred to a patient who's suffering from terminal dementia to the point that further medical care is more or less pointless. Whether you fixed their kidney infection or not, alzheimers or one of the many other causes of dementia has killed enough brain cells that the "gomer" knows little more than their name - or is in a persistent vegetative state with basically a 0% chance of recovery.

But, the "Get out of My ER" definition can be applied more broadly. A healthy 16 year old that comes in over a pimple is presumably also a gomer.

What does the word mean?
 
GeraldMonroe said:
I thought "gomer" usually referred to a patient who's suffering from terminal dementia to the point that further medical care is more or less pointless...What does the word mean?
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Your initial viewpoint is more in line with the traditional application of the term. "GOMER" more or less refers to patients that medical personnel feel would be better off dying peacefully instead of taking up the limited resources in a hospital emergency room in order to keep them alive.
 
lukgirl said:
...I think the term has evolved to be used more loosely to include super-over-achiever students who are way to eager. For example, I've often heard people talk about the "gunners who sit in the front row" of lecture.
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Nah- The term has not evolved it still means what it always did, and is most often used in that context. Rather, many people misuse it. It still means what it means -- those despised folks who compromise personal relationships to get ahead. It's a pejorative term, plain and simple. But people call folks who work hard or sit in the front row a "gunner" much as they might jokingly call someone who doesn't work as hard or sits in the back a "slacker". It's just a bastardization of the term. That people misuse it in this way doesn't mean it has evolved so much as it means some people don't know the definition, or throw around the pejoratives as good natured ribbing.
 
Does anyone feel like they don't have any gunners in thier class? My class is so tight, I just don't feel like anyone is out to get anyone else. If anything, people in my class are pretty selfless in helping others succeed. Has anyone had this experience?
 
lildave2586 said:
Does anyone feel like they don't have any gunners in thier class? My class is so tight, I just don't feel like anyone is out to get anyone else. If anything, people in my class are pretty selfless in helping others succeed. Has anyone had this experience?
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Wait till you get to the wards and people realize that most of their grades are going to be subjective evaluations. The real gunners will show themselves then.
 
Mr hawkings said:
Wait till you get to the wards and people realize that most of their grades are going to be subjective evaluations. The real gunners will show themselves then.
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That is something of which I had not thought. I can see how things would change then. For now, we are all on the same playing field and not many people act competitive. Hopefully it won't change, but you never know.
 
lildave2586 said:
That is something of which I had not thought. I can see how things would change then. For now, we are all on the same playing field and not many people act competitive. Hopefully it won't change, but you never know.
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There are always a few. In the first two years, there is probably a spirit of helping each other, especially if you are in a system which is P/F or not a curve. But once it's subjective and people feel their grade depends on looking better than their peers, the claws come out.
 
Would I be considered a “gunner” if I contacted all the professors before starting med school and asked them if they need their driveways or decks sealed?
 
gracie369 said:
Would I be considered a “gunner” if I contacted all the professors before starting med school and asked them if they need their driveways or decks sealed?
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Not really -- you didn't compromise any relationships in doing so. That's a brown-noser, which is very different than a gunner. They are harmless. Gunners aren't. A gunner would more likely take a jackhammer to a profs driveway to blame it on a classmate.
 
Law2Doc said:
Yeah, people misuse the term a lot as well -- calling someone who simply works hard and does well a "gunner", as a good natured ribbing, much as you would call someone laid back a "slacker". But in fact, it's the dude who backstabs, who compromises relationships to get ahead, who climbs to the top on the back of others. We had a dude (or dudette -- we never found out) who used to run to the library in law school and rip out the pages of texts on reserve after using them, so anybody else would have to travel to another school's library if they wanted to do the assignment. That was a good example of a gunner. In med school the gunners tend to really come out in 3rd year -- it will be the person who jumps in and snags the attending questions before you can get a word out, so you look like you know less, the person who "volunteers" you to take care of the undesirable patient because they already had one with X ailment (even though they only have two patients and you already have three), or who simply finds a way not to leave at the end of the day so you always look like you are cutting out early. While schools sometimes try to discourage this, it still occurs here and there at all med schools, and always will.
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How much of these efforts are actually successful in ruining someone else's clerkship grades? I would think it would be obvious to the attending... ?
 
As far as the origin of the term "gunner", it's fairly congruent with this definition in the OED:

2. intr. To shoot with a gun; hence, to make war. to gun for: to shoot for, to go in search of with a gun; also, to go after or in search of; to seek to attack, harm, or destroy (someone). Phrase to go gunning, in which the participial form represents historically a-gunning (see GUNNING vbl. n. and -ING2). Chiefly U.S.
a1622 SIR R. HAWKINS Observ. §10 (1622) 19 Which is a bad custome received and vsed of many ignorant persons presently to gun at all whatsoever they discover, before they speake with them. 1622 DRAYTON Poly-olb. xxiii. (1748) 355 Forc'd by some yelping cute to give the greyhounds view, Which are at length let slip when gunning out they go. 1767 N. Eng. Hist. & Gen. Register (1860) XIV. 47 All Persons coming to gun on said Island after Game. 1779 D. GOOKIN Ibid. (1862) XVI. 29 Our men went out this day gunning, saw deer and wild Turkey, killed none. 1839 MARRYAT Diary Amer. Ser. I. II. 102, I was hardly twelve years old, and had never been allowed to go out gunning. 1865 U. S. GRANT in Century Mag. (1889) Nov. 146/2 The whole captures since the army started out gunning, will amount to not less than twelve thousand men and probably fifty pieces of artillery. 1888 Century Mag. Mar. 780/1 The guards..used..to gun for prisoners' heads..after the fashion of boys after squirrels. 1893 W. K. POST Harvard Stories 188 That bull Mick Shreedy is gunning for me just at present. 1903 N.Y. Times 29 Sept. 1 Others talked of mysterious influences that had been ‘gunning’ for financiers of prominence. 1922 Daily Mail 5 Dec. 9 Observing that the Company's statement is not a denial of the assertion that it is ‘gunning’ for the Mesopotamian oilfields claimed by the heirs of Abdul Hamid. 1930 ‘E. QUEEN’ French Powder Mystery xix. 171 Mr. Trask has been gunning for Bernice [with a view to marriage] for over a year. 1936 WODEHOUSE Laughing Gas xviii. 198 Nice little bit of luck, finding her like that... Matter of fact, I wasn't gunning for her at all, really. I came to get that notebook. 1950 G. GREENE Third Man iii. 31 I'm gunning..for Colonel Callaghan. 1955 Times 16 June 12/2 You found when you came back from Oslo that for other reasons the Communist Party was ‘gunning’ for Mr. Frankel? 1958 Observer 10 Aug. 3/2 Last week American commentators were gunning for Mr. Dulles (‘too busy, too tired, too discouraged, too stale,’ said Walter Lippmann..). 1960 C. DAY LEWIS Buried Day ix. 204, I felt that ‘They’ were gunning for me again.
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I'm not sure whether it's because they are gunning for their fellow students (i.e. seeking to sabotage them) or gunning for the top grade.
 
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