Inflated language: Is that treatment efficacious or deleterious?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier this week I read an article from John’s Hopkins Medicine about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine titled A New, One-Shot COVID-19 Vaccine containing the following sentence:

 

“We view all three available COVID-19 vaccines as highly efficacious for preventing serious disease, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.”

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the adjective efficacious as:

 

“having the power to produce a desired effect” and then says it is a synonym for effective.

 

Another inflated adjective is deleterious, defined by Merriam-Webster as:

 

“harmful often in a subtle or unexpected way” but a fancy synonym for bad. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, the noun forms for these words with the -ness suffix are still more inflated.

 

Mark Twain allegedly once said:

 

“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”