College slackers adjusting to med school

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That is not awesome. That entire article is a joke, and the etymology of the term "pimping" in medicine does come from the common slang usage nowadays. This is made all the worse by the fact that not only does it reflect the gratuitous vulgarity so many in our society love to indulge in, it doesn't even make any sense.

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That is not awesome. That entire article is a joke, and the etymology of the term "pimping" in medicine has does come from the common slang usage nowadays. This is made all the worse by the fact that not only does it reflect the gratuitous vulgarity so many in our society love to indulge in, it doesn't even make any sense.
PIMP = put in my place. It's not referring to the guy wearing a pink suit and driving a Caddy with shiny wheels. It's pointing out how you'll realize how little you know when an attending gives you a tough question.
 
PIMP = put in my place. It's not referring to the guy wearing a pink suit and driving a Caddy with shiny wheels. It's pointing out how you'll realize how little you know when an attending gives you a tough question.

I very, sincerely, highly doubt this. The notion that a common word came from an acronym is one of the most common types of urban legends. (See the last entry on this page, by a guy who writes a column about words, where he says he's had someone try to tell him that dog stands for Domestic Omnivore exhibiting Gratitude!) When someone tells you about an alleged acronymic origin of a word, your first reaction should be to disbelieve it.
 
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I very, sincerely, highly doubt this. The notion that a common word came from an acronym is one of the most common types of urban legends. (See the last entry on this page, by a guy who writes a column about words, where he says he's had someone try to tell him that dog stands for Domestic Omnivore exhibiting Gratitude!) When someone tells you about an alleged acronymic origin of a word, your first reaction should be to disbelieve it.
So, other than examples of other words that aren't acronyms, you have nothing to disprove what I said?
 
That is not awesome. That entire article is a joke, and the etymology of the term "pimping" in medicine does come from the common slang usage nowadays. This is made all the worse by the fact that not only does it reflect the gratuitous vulgarity so many in our society love to indulge in, it doesn't even make any sense.

it's humorous, and i enjoyed reading it. hence, it's awesome to me. i'll bet you're the life of the party, huh?
 
So, other than examples of other words that aren't acronyms, you have nothing to disprove what I said?

Technically, no, but given that it's common for people to make up phony acronymic origins for words, and that these always turn out to be wrong, the burden of proof should be on you.

I mean, think about it. Let's say what you say is true. Presumably, the practice we are calling "pimping" was already well-established as a part of medical education, but either students just called it "quizzing" or "questioning," or they didn't know what to call it. But then, somewhere, some bright medical student said to his classmate, "hey, that attending just really put me in my place. Hmm... put in my place. We could take the first letter of each of those words, and make a word out of it: pimp! Now we have something to call this practice!" Then word spread at that school, most people thought it was a good idea, those students talked to med students at other schools, they thought it was a good idea too, and the word caught on nationwide. Furthermore, this happened in a context totally divorced from any already existing word "pimp," meaning a man who organizes the services of prostitutes, since you say the etymologies are not related.

It sounds totally bogus, just like Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden for golf, Port Out, Starboard Home for posh, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge for f*ck, and all the rest. Much more likely that some medical student was daydreaming and thought to himself, "hey, wouldn't it be funny if pimp stood for something? Let's see, how about... put in my place! Yeah, that works!"
 
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