From 'arse-ropes' to 'flying venom', a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicine
- Written by Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-NDSymptom, virus, epidemic, quarantine.
We’ve become used to these terms in 2020. But the “COVID-19 vocabulary” might have been very different had it not been for a few twists and turns in English history.
If history had gone differently, for instance, we might visit the leech about flying venom...
