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mollusque commented on the word outpatiently
Google Scholar shows more than 50 instances of "outpatiently" in medical articles, but none in journals based in Anglophone countries.
In Text Therapeutics, "written specifically for medical science professionals whose mother tongue is not English", Judy McIntosh (2001, p. 38) states "on an out-patient basis ≠ outpatiently: 'outpatient' cannot be used as an adverb".
If a word is used in English only by non-native speakers of English, is it an English word?
February 22, 2008
reesetee commented on the word outpatiently
Hmm. If a tree falls in the forest....
February 23, 2008
sionnach commented on the word outpatiently
Somewhat analogously, I've often wished that "molecularly" were an admissible adverb. Its inadmissibility forces one to use such locutions as "at the molecular level".
February 23, 2008
mollusque commented on the word outpatiently
Nothing wrong with molecularly: it gets 90,000 hits in Google Scholar, and is listed in MW3 and OED2. The latter says, "On a molecular scale, at a molecular level. Also: as regards molecules". Outpatient is a noun, and while it can be used as an adjective ("outpatient treatment"), the normal adverbial meaning of "patiently" makes "outpatiently" non-idiomatic, even though it's grammatically correct.
February 23, 2008
reesetee commented on the word outpatiently
This all reminds me of my company's director, who is apparently addicted to the phrase "from a (fill in the blank) perspective"--even when it makes no grammatical sense at all. So bored was I at the last meeting that I actually kept track of how many times he used it: 28 times in 33 minutes.
Ah, corporate-speak. You can't beat it with a stick. Unfortunately.
February 23, 2008