4 ms·

Ooh, yes, that one must have been embarrassing indeed :-) "Préservatif" is such a weird euphemism.

• stochastic_monk 8y ago
  “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre.
  • pygy_ 8y ago
    Wow TIL. I have a medical background, so I'm familiar with the "preventive" meaning, but I wasn't aware of the "contraceptive" one.
  • JadeNB 8y ago
    > “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre. Isn't it (less bizarre)? My dictionary gives the medical meaning of prophylactic as "intended to prevent disease"; using it to refer to contraception just requires a more generous conception of 'disease'. By contrast, if 'préservatif' in French were translated to 'preservative' in English, it would mean, again according to my dictionary, "a substance used to preserve … against decay." I find it a bit more of a stretch to generalise this to pregnancy. On the other hand, maybe it is just my English-speaker-ness showing through that I can think of pregnancy much more easily as a disease (it literally causes dis-ease …) than as decay.
    • stochastic_monk 8y ago
      You’re right. I’d not realized that it was regarding preventing disease, not simply a generic precautionary measure. And while pregnancy may well be viewed as a disease or a cancer, after a fashion, at least condoms protect from a wider range of affliction.