Medical
The role of insults in the social sense may be better understood by an appreciation of how the term is used in a medical setting. Though a popular idiom refers to "adding insult to injury", in a medical context, they are one and the same: physicians examine injuries resulting from an insult to flesh and bones, caused by various traumatic events. In speech and in social settings, insults are words which tend to injure or damage the psyche. In humor, insults may be exchanged in much the same way as fighters exchange blows in training, to develop a resistance to the pain of mild injuries, or to spar with no real intention of causing any serious injury.
Read more about this topic: Insult
Famous quotes containing the word medical:
“One fellow I was dating in medical school ... was a veterinarian and he wanted to get married. I said, but you’re going to be moving to Minneapolis, and he said, oh, you can quit and I’ll take care of you. I said, “Go.””
—Sylvia Beckman (b. c. 1931)
“There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic—in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea—known to medical science is work.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)