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To: 60Gunner

"gorked" -- been awhile since I've heard that one.

I worked in military ERs for several years, those too can be interesting.

Please add me to your well written list if you please.


From the web- (http://www.takeourword.com)

We suspect that the word you refer to is a corruption of gorked, a slang medical term which originally meant "anesthetized". It dates from before the 1970s, though no one seems to know the origin of the term, other than the guess that it was coined due to its expressive sound, and perhaps due to its similarity to the word dork.

The noun gork was back-formed from gorked in the early 1970s, having the meaning "a severely brain-damaged person". A brief scan of the Web showed the word gorked still being used to mean "anesthetized" or "doped up", as in "I was gorked on Valium".

I ran across the word for the first time recently when a profoundly brain-damaged infant was referred to as gorked. It's not difficult to see how the word might come to be applied to anything that is damaged or not working properly, or, as you phrased it, "messed up".


39 posted on 12/20/2006 9:46:53 AM PST by ASOC (The phrase "What if" or "If only" are for children.)
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To: ASOC
ASOC, you have been added to my ER Nursing stories ping list. Thanks for the comment! We use "gorked" almost exclusively to refer to a brain-damaged or brain-dead patient.

OTOH, when referring to a patient who has been rendered unconscious or sedated by medication, we use the term "snowed" (as in the "snow" you see on the TV screen when the station goes off the air). Perhaps I should create an ER Glossary of Terms. Some of the words are entertaining, but many of the terms might be offensive to less understanding souls, even if not meant to be so. It's the "trench humor," you understand.

42 posted on 12/20/2006 9:55:02 AM PST by 60Gunner (ER Nursing: Saving humanity, one life at a time.)
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