Thoughts on neologisms and pleonasm in scientific discourse and tobacco control

As public health reckons with the implications of language, word choice and their impacts,1–3 so too does Tobacco Control . Indeed, editor-in-chief in 2010 pointed to power language bounding discussions field.4 A common parlance or agreed on set terms is important for moving science (and policy) forward—comparing like like, allowing replication, facilitating review synthesis, translating into action. Prior 2000, tobacco marketplace was, retrospect, fairly simple. Cigarettes, chewing tobacco, moist snuff, dry cigars, pipes, waterpipes bidis captured most marketplace. There were subtypes products regional variation be sure, but themselves nearly universal. More recently, has become increasingly diversified invention marketing new nicotine products. Terms have proliferated try capture this complexity, while grouping conceptually superficially similar ease reference. This occasioned a panoply neologisms (newly coined words), retronyms (eg, ‘tobacco cigarette’ distinguish from ‘electronic cigarette’) portmanteau (new words formed existing not mention invented used single paper (nonce words) that are pleonastic novel emerging products). Taking an opportunity categorise as framework discussion, table 1 below lists examples we seen last 5 years. View table: Table Examples descriptive products, organised by implications The diversity nomenclature approaching absurdity. proliferate, it becomes difficult compare across …