Word: layman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thomas' previous books, The Lives of a Cell and The Medusa and the Snail, described many aspects of science, technology, computers, and their effects on human life. Writing in a graceful and easy prose, he showed a flair for bringing technical and erudite concepts within reach of a layman. In his latest book, he repeats this feat, writing smoothly and understandably of histocompatibility complexes, mycoplasmas, and endotoxins...
Medved's people are fiercely assertive about their individualities. Yet, surprisingly, many hold the layman's stereotypes about the medical profession: surgeons are coldhearted, cardiologists are technophiles, psychiatrists are intellectuals, and young nurses are lusty. They are also quick to see their own worst traits in colleagues: selfishness, excessive competitiveness and arrogance. This is particularly true when the doctors were formerly husband and wife...
Doty added that a special feature of this conference is to work out proposals, rather than to educate the layman or to advocate any existing arms control plan...
...June of last year president Bok initiated his drive to help educate the public on nuclear issues by commissioning five Harvard professors to write a layman's guide to the question...
That odd word, which describes how a gweep feels when he meets a phrog (see below), generally applies to anything so bad that the computerist cries out, "Bletch!" (the equivalent of the layman's "Yecch!"). This and much else can be learned from a remarkable work called The Hacker's Dictionary, which, as might be expected, is not a book but a computer printout that can be acquired only by accessing the right data base. The term hacker is itself an example, for underground languages like to reverse the connotations of words; in black English, for instance...